


Storms on the Jade Sea

by ladymelodrama, salzrand



Series: Jade Sea Scrolls [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, But mostly fluff, But they can handle it, Essos fic, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grandpa Jeor, Jaime/Brienne people go to Ch 20, Jorah and Daenerys live on the Jade Sea, Missandei deserved better, Sequel, and probably the first time i've given them a happy ending, but happy family elements, everyone living their best lives, it's a small reference, s1 canon divergence, some danger, that's one of the major themes, that's the Jade Sea way, together with family fluff, ya know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 87,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22130512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymelodrama/pseuds/ladymelodrama, https://archiveofourown.org/users/salzrand/pseuds/salzrand
Summary: Sequel to "Sunrise on the Jade Sea." Picks up the continuing story of the Mormont-Targaryen family about ten years after the events of the first book. Appearances by other familiar faces on the east side of the Narrow Sea. #OGTeamTargaryenWith illustrations by salzrand <3
Relationships: Ashara Dayne/Barristan Selmy, Grey Worm/Missandei, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth (background), Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: Jade Sea Scrolls [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592998
Comments: 809
Kudos: 210





	1. Prologue - The Memory of Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, friends. I'm back! _With_ the promised sequel to "Sunrise." This will actually be Part Two of the "Jade Sea Scrolls" series (thank you, fanoftheknight, for coining the series name btw! :)) because I've decided that there's too much to fit in just one volume. So there will also be a Part Three. Hopefully you all don't mind :)
> 
> The first book was a pretty even split between Essos/Westeros but this will be primarily an Essos fic, with some familiar faces turning up. And this first chapter is more of a prologue, since it actually takes place during the timeline/events of "Sunrise." You'll see where I'm headed with this ;) #OGTeamTargaryen #IHeartButterflies 
> 
> To my regular readers, mwah! and *bear hugs* :) :) :) To any new readers - if you haven't read the first book, you probably should. I'm not sure how much sense this story will make if you don't. 
> 
> But to sum up where we were when we left off - Jorah/Daenerys still live in their villa on the Jade Sea with their three children and Jeor, who decided to retire in the East after the whole "zombie apocalypse" thing was resolved. He brought Maester Aemon with him, so the old dragon could die surrounded by his family, which he did. Peacefully. And from Maester Aemon's funeral pyre were hatched three baby dragons, one for each of the Mormont-Targaryen children. Names of the dragons will be revealed in upcoming chapters <3
> 
> As with all my longer fics, I'll try to do weekly updates, usually posted on either Sat. or Sun. And salzrand has decided to come along with me on this journey once more so ASDFKJKLDLSDDKLGFSDFGGHH #KEYBOARDSMASH #YAY. More pretty artworks coming our way *HEART EYES* Including the gorgeous one that you will find in this first chapter (my Missangrey and/or Greysanndei loving-heart is sparking with joy) <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 
> 
> So excited to return to the Jade Sea! Okay, here we go...

**_Missandei_ **

In my life, I’ve been asked what happened that day in Astapor a thousand times. Perhaps more.

And I expect it is a question that I’ll be asked until the day I die. For that day, and that dark hour when I was dragged down to the harbor and the Walk of Punishment, will always be marked in the minds of many as the day that the rebellion began in Slaver’s Bay, spreading through the entire region like wildfire once started, in a way that I don’t think anyone could have stopped, even if they wanted to.

That day, the skies to the east of the Red City were _so_ dark, bruised black and mulberry as far east as east went, breaking into blue skies only at the edge of Astapor itself, where we escaped its sparking fever and watched the storm from afar, under an eerie burst of sunlight from the west. It was two storms colliding, one that came down from the mountains and one that hurtled over the southern sea on dangerous winds. And they say the sky within those storms went so dark that those from Asshai to Qarth had to light candles at midday to see anything.

But I only remember glimpses of sky and the rumble of distant thunder, as I was too busy kicking and struggling and fighting against the two guards who dragged me to the Walk. Who bound my hands and struck my face. Again and again. I remember the sound and crunch of boots striking stone and the smell of sweat, as I made them struggle too. I wouldn’t be nailed to any post willingly.

And if they dared release my hands, even for a few seconds, I would claw at the collar on my throat until I tore it off. For I wouldn’t die with a collar around my neck, _damn_ them. 

_Damn_ the curses on the lips of Master Kraznys and those men who held me. 

_Damn_ the knotted and barbed claws of leather lashes, as their many whips bit against my skin. As their chains were tightened around my wrists.

It’s at this moment in the memory that I can’t remember much more. 

Just that distant growl of thunder east of the city. The crash of the sea against the breakwater, those larger waves giving us a small taste of the fierceness of the storm that would miss Astapor by only a few leagues, as it would remain easterly, settling over Qarth and further to the Jade Sea. 

And I remember Grey Worm’s voice from somewhere far off, calling out my name, desperately, “Missandei!” And then, the roar of a dragon…

But no. As many times as I’ve told this story, I think they have it all wrong. 

I don’t think that’s the day the Rebellion started at all, although I nod along when others say it and give them a patient smile, allowing them to think what they want. They will anyway. And the history books like violent scenes and grand gestures so what happened in Astapor that day fits the tale they wish to tell. 

But the _true_ beginning of the uprising in Slaver’s Bay happened ten years before any dragons came to Astapor. 

Ten years before—when the very idea of what happened later might have filled me with the deepest dread, as I was meek then. Meek and compliant, quick to serve and quick to bow my head. And back then, I would never have doubted that my _entire_ life would be spent with a collar around my neck. Any other wish or desire was impossible. The white sands and blue butterflies of Naath were like a pleasant, silly dream I once had. 

But that’s all it was. Just a young girl’s dream, with no more substance than vapor.

I was in the service of Master Kraznys mo Nakloz, having been plucked from the duties of a household slave once my master realized my affinity for languages. At which time, I served him daily in the courtyard of his grand palace or the gilded plazas of the city, wherever he happened to be conducting business.

And he conducted much business, as his army of Unsullied was unparalleled and men and women came from far and wide to view his soldiers and haggle over a trade. Gold coins for bronze armor. Silver mines for the chance to bloody a city that they wished to conquer.

That day, two westerners came seeking Master Kraznys.

“Master Kraznys says you are most welcome to Astapor,” I translated my master’s words to the two guests from Westeros, trying to smooth over his less generous comments as best I could. He didn’t welcome the Westerosi at all. They had come to inquire over the Unsullied but my master had grown weary of showing off his soldiers to foreigners without the means or inclination to purchase them. 

And these foreigners seemed hesitant and indecisive, to say the least. 

They were more curious than anything else. Once, this would have satisfied Master Kraznys, as there was a time when showing off his best soldiers was a favorite pastime. But after a while it became a tiresome routine, and unless a sale was on the horizon, he found it to be a waste of time. 

As the hour wore on, his insults to the men grew crasser and crasser.

The Westerosi were very strange and mismatched, as one was broad and bald, dressed in flowing, brightly-colored robes made of silks and damask, and the other was a dwarf with a second name that apparently meant something to Master Kraznys and the other masters.

“They used to say his father shit gold,” Master Kraznys mused to Master Amirys, who lounged on the raised dais in the courtyard as a guest of my master, both being fanned by slave girls and dipping bread in oil and black pepper as my master received his potential customers. He added, “Maybe we should cut the little man open and find out if it’s a family trait.”

I neglected to translate my master’s musings. 

“And how many Unsullied are in Astapor?” The dwarf spoke a little Valyrian but his vocabulary was rudimentary and his accent was not very good. Rather nasal and sharp at the edges. He had apologized to me before abandoning his first, feeble attempts in favor of the Common Tongue. 

It didn’t matter to me. One language was as good as another. And I knew nineteen.

The dwarf’s companion may have known more Valyrian than he let on, as he seemed to shift at Master Kraznys’s words occasionally, in a way that I would suspect originated in understanding. But he was aloof and appeared disinclined to speak anything but a few dry words to the dwarf. He kept his soft, white hands in the folds of his robes and kept glancing around my master’s house, quietly observing the surroundings.

“Eight thousand Unsullied, my lord,” I answered the question without the need to ask Master Kraznys for the information, knowing well enough how many slave soldiers my master had ready for sale.

“What did you say to them?” Master Kraznys demanded, unhappy when I answered first and translated after.

“The small one wished to know the number of Unsullied that you have for sale and I told him eight thousand,” I replied, my tone going meek and apologetic. Master Kraznys sighed at the mundane revelation and went back to chatting with the good master beside him, while the westerners talked between themselves.

“Eight thousand would be a start,” the dwarf said. “And Illyrio promised to front at least half the cost. We’d have to convince the Iron Bank to loan us the rest but—”

“Best not to jump ahead of ourselves,” the bald man interjected. “We still have to convince her. She is the key. Without her, we will have nothing more than an expensive army.”

“You doubt she’ll accept our offer?”

“She’ll accept it,” the taller man nodded, confidently. Until his features changed and he conceded, “ _If_ she’s her father’s daughter. Her brothers would have jumped at the chance to reclaim what was theirs. And she must be stir-crazy, hidden away in that far off corner of the world unless…”

“Unless what?”

“There may be reasons why she’s stayed in the east which we don’t yet know.”

“Then why did you drag me here to view the Unsullied?”

“It was on the way.” The bald man gave his companion a pursed smile and shrugged.

“What the _fuck_ are they muttering about?” Master Kraznys looked to me, never happy when the conversation in the Common Tongue ran on too long. He didn’t like not knowing what was being said.

I suppose I could have translated all of it but I didn’t understand who they were talking about or why any of it might matter and some nagging little thought in the back of my head kept my tongue…reserved. 

I replied, “Astapor, master. They find the Red City to be all that was promised and more. They find your palace to be grander than expected and your hospitality very generous. And they are pleased with the number of Unsullied.”

But Master Kraznys was neither pleased nor encouraged about the prospect of a sale. His wealth was made a long time ago. He only continued to train and trade Unsullied because it was a distraction. The only joy he seemed take in the Unsullied anymore was the training, as he took great pleasure in weeding out the weak from the strong.

Too much pleasure.

“Come, bring these sons of whores down to the barracks and I will show them my army,” Master Kraznys reached for the Harpy’s Fingers, the whip of the Unsullied, from where it lay beside his couch. Once in hand, he strode down the clay steps of the raised dais and swiftly walked down the mezzanine. 

“My master bids you to examine the Unsullied for yourselves,” I told the two men, encouraging them to follow Master Kraznys out into the sunlit courtyard and beyond, to the barracks, where the Unsullied had been standing for a day and night without food, water or rest. 

Master Kraznys led them down row after row of soldiers in bronze armor, all in strict and straight formation. Each and every Unsullied was dressed exactly the same, with shields and sharpened spears held aloft, their spiked helmets worn at all times, with only their eyes visible through the narrow slits in the bronze. Master Kraznys took long strides, which I struggled to match, ducking my head and turning to translate his flurry of words to the westerners.

“The Unsullied are trained from infancy. They have a high tolerance for pain and will not break lines, even to the point of death. They will not sack cities except upon command. They do not yield to the urges of other soldiers as they are castrated early…”

“That must bring back some memories?” the dwarf asked his companion, with a little too much cleverness.

The bald man glared at him darkly but did not reply.

“My master wishes you to know that should you be interested in purchasing any of his soldiers, it would be in your best interest to blood them early on smaller cities as they will need more experience if you intend to use them on a larger scale.”

“We’ll consider it,” the bald man replied, grimly. 

As the day had progressed, I noticed that he seemed more and more uncomfortable with the Unsullied. And here, in the midst of the slave soldiers, he seemed anxious to be on his way. The dwarf remained curious and interested, reaching up and brazenly flicking the side of one of the Unsullied, before jumping back quickly, afraid of retaliation.

The Unsullied did not move. 

“What did he say?” Master Kraznys wondered.

“They’ll think about it,” I shrugged just a little, knowing how Master Kraznys would react to the news. He didn’t like wasting time and the two westerners had eaten up a great chunk of his afternoon. An afternoon he preferred to spend sitting in the plaza, bidding on new slave girls and eating grapes and figs.

In anger, Master Kraznys went to the nearest Unsullied—the one the dwarf had flicked. He pulled a knife from his belt and cut through the soldier’s leather breastplate to reveal the man’s bare chest.

“You see?” he turned to our guests, hairy eyebrows rising in confidence before slicing off the Unsullied’s nipple and casting it to the sand and salt-swept stone below. The soldier did not flinch, not on the blade’s bite, not as another piece of him was thrown away so carelessly. Master Kraznys wiped his bloody hand on his yellow and green robes, as he continued, “You may search the world over but you will never find another army like the Unsullied.”

“I would never doubt it,” the dwarf allowed, even before I finished translating. They were both impressed and shocked. And perhaps a little unsettled, based on the expressions gracing their features.

But they also wouldn’t be buying any Unsullied. Not that day.

So with the tour concluded and no further business to attend to, Master Kraznys led his guests back out the way they came, his hurried footsteps expressing his muted rage well enough. 

I followed them, struggling to keep up with the pace of the men once again. And as I took a too hurried step, I tripped on a loose stone in the courtyard. It was a red piece of clay in the dust and my sandal caught its edge too sharply. 

I didn’t have time to cry out. I would be sprawled on the ground in only a moment, at which point I would quickly scramble to my feet, hopefully before Master Kraznys had a chance to turn, see my clumsiness and order me to the lash for it.

But I didn’t fall that day.

I didn’t fall because a hand suddenly reached out from the formation to take my forearm and steady my balance.

A hand that was strong and sure and released me almost as soon as he touched me.

And when I looked up, so briefly, so fleetingly, I saw his dark brown eyes peering back at me through the narrow slit in his bronze helmet. I held his gaze for a beat longer than I might have meant to.

What he did…reaching out like that—oh, if our master saw… 

It was punishable by death. As was any glance that wasn’t commanded or _any_ action that wasn’t prompted by the person who held the Harpy’s Fingers. 

_Why did you do it?_

He said nothing but he did not look away. He looked at me. He _saw_ me, as no one ever saw me. Not since the days I still sat cross-legged on the beaches of Naath, starfruit in my little hands, sticky juice running down my fingers, laughing with the others, all whose names I’ve long forgotten now. 

And I saw him too. Brown eyes with gold flecks. The lingering feel of his hand on my arm. A snatch of connection and that was it. 

His eyes snapped away just as mine dropped to the ground. Whatever it was, it was over in a matter of seconds. I hurried to keep up with my master and his guests, careful to avoid any other loose stones on the path.

We never spoke of it. There were times when I thought I must have imagined it.

But I will swear it until I’m in my grave… 

_That_ was the day. That was the hour. The minute. The half-second. The exact moment when the bloody, terrible and _glorious_ uprising of Slaver’s Bay began.


	2. The Sweetest Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, Jorleesi fluff :)
> 
> With two (2!!!) pretty drawings by salzrand <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 #Blessed

**_Jorah_ **

I rarely dream. Or, at least, I rarely remember my dreams.

Jarred awake too often in my youth—by the war horns of a melee, a siege, a khalasar on the move—my sleeping patterns were too irregular to allow for dreams. And maybe I fell out of practice. Although even when I was a boy on Bear Island, I don’t remember dreaming all that often. 

Which was probably for the best…as my mother’s death was not something I’d want to relive a thousand times, with pain and loss always ripe for the workings of a subconscious mind. 

There’s no escaping your own head.

For years after the battle at Castle Black, there were still times when Daenerys would wake me up in the middle of the night. Her softly murmured “ _Shhhh_. Jorah, wake up…” bringing me out of dreams I couldn’t remember but which left me in a cold sweat nonetheless.

It wasn’t hard to guess the contents of those black dreams. 

The ragged moans and screams of dying men echo far beyond a single night. And those monsters that we had faced were the embodiment of nightmares. They swarmed in the night—faceless, nearly voiceless, just fast-moving shadows in the forest and crashes in the underbrush. A slicing sword blade out of the darkness, parried by desperate instinct more than anything else. They’d been visible in mere glimpses, under a moon too easily swallowed by storm clouds. 

Perhaps that was mercy in the end. I’m not sure I could have stood my ground if I saw them face-to-face in daylight, as they were unholy creatures, the likes of which I hope this world never sees again. 

It was a night I would never forget, though in waking hours, I rarely thought on it. And its horrors grew less and less powerful as the years passed, as the children grew taller and Daenerys and I settled back into the same simple life as before, albeit with a little more grey in my beard and a few more lines crinkling around her pretty, violet eyes.

And on the nights when those dreams dared to bubble up from some hidden corner of my head, Daenerys was always there, her hands on my face, softly caressing and turning me towards her, as she said with a voice that was half-tease and half-worry, “You thrash like a bear when you’re in those dreams.”

“I’m all right,” I would answer her, waking, immediately recognizing the familiar scents of lemons and lavender, in Daenerys’s hair, in the gardens outside, all mixed with the salt off the coast that drifted in through windows thrown open to the warm night air. 

My muscles would relax, my fist unclenching from a twisted bedsheet, becoming calm once more. And then I would take her wandering hand and kiss the backs of her knuckles before bringing both our hands together, to rest at my heart, feeling the beat in my chest slow at the comforting knowledge of where I was and who I lay beside.

_We are home, Jorah. We are home to stay._

But those dreams are rare and the ones I do remember are all pleasant ones. A few weeks before Aemon was born, I dreamed of a young man who looked a lot like me, pulling a lionfish with golden scales from the sea. “Look at her eyes,” the young man marveled as he held it up for my inspection and I saw sapphires where its pupils should be.

I dreamed of Daenerys the night before we wed, of taking her hand and leading her through the labyrinth of sea caves along the coast on Bear Island, a dusting of snow frosting the sand where we explored, all jagged rocks and pockmarked pools of hot springs. She laughed and said, “But where will I plant my gardens, Jorah?”

And I dreamed of her again now. 

_In_ her gardens this time. Sitting on the stone bench beneath one of her lemon trees, braiding twine while I stood nearby, in full plate armor though there appeared to be no danger. Jeorgianna, Aemon and Daenielle’s voice were in the distance, as always, little snippets of words and phrases landing on my ears in pure, lovely nonsense.

_Apples and lemons, fly me to the heavens, we are bears and dragons both._

“Watch out for the butterflies,” Daenerys cautioned in the dream, in a mild manner, not raising her eyes from the industry of her hands.

“What butterflies?” I answered, before realizing I was surrounded by a blue and white host of insects, a cloud that hovered just above me, their wings fluttering in sunlight until they started landing, one and then a few more, on my breastplate, pauldron and gauntlets. On my face even, forehead, eyelids and beard. It didn’t matter. Slow but steady, a hundred butterflies landing on my skin, until I was covered in them, the armor acting as no shield to the feel of their little feet and fluttering wings.

Surprisingly, the sensation was not unpleasant. And somehow _familiar_.

Soon, the dream scenery began to dissolve, like sugar in water, fading, fading and gone…and I grinned wide as I woke, to the _very_ familiar sensation of Daenerys sprawled over me, trailing a dozen kisses over my chest and shoulders, running up the curve of my neck.

The kisses were soft and light against my skin but certainly made with the intention of waking me up. 

“Finally,” she mused, in mock displeasure, as she felt my right arm slide around her. She raised her silver-blonde head and caught sight of the grin on my face, answering it with one of her own. Her grinning lips continued to trail up, along my jawline and back, to a spot just behind my ear, where she added, “I thought you’d sleep straight through your first nameday present.”

“Well, I’m an old man now,” I murmured smartly, waking slowly and breathing in deeply, despite her added weight on top of my chest. But she’d never weighed much of anything, even in the later months of carrying the children. “We need our rest.”

“You’ve been using that same excuse for the last seventeen years, _Ser_ ,” she grumbled, likely tired of reminding me. But this morning, unlike the others, I had an answer ready for her. It was my nameday, after all.

“If you don’t allow me to say it now…,” I began with confidence, knowing I had the upper hand. A simple count of years was on my side. I casually raised my left arm and brought it behind my head, so I was propped up and able to look at her squarely, “A man should be allowed to call himself old on his sixtieth nameday, shouldn’t he?”

“Not if his wife doesn’t approve,” she countered, meeting my gaze and shaking her head firmly, having anticipated this excuse. She then ducked down again and pressed a lingering kiss at the crook of my neck, back to what she’d begun while I was still dreaming.

“And you don’t approve?” I guessed.

“No, I don’t,” she nearly growled, like a she-bear. It was a tone she’d picked up from me so I deserved to be on the receiving end of it, I suppose. 

I grinned again, this time at her stubbornness, but she was busy and likely missed the grin. Her kisses trailed up my throat to the brambles of stubble on my chin. When her mouth finally found mine, she whispered at the edge of our joined lips, “I’ll allow you to call yourself old on my sixtieth nameday. How’s that sound?”

“Fair enough, _Khaleesi_ …” 

We played at another kiss, this one slow and dripping honey, like the Jade Sea sunrise that was just starting to spill into our bedroom window and along the sheets of our bed. Afterwards, she propped her forearm on my chest and hovered just above me, her head cocked to one side slightly, watching my features. I’m sure they’d turned a little too serious for her liking.

I couldn’t help it.

It was the mention of Daenerys’s sixtieth nameday. Which, admittedly, was still many years off. 

_But not that many_ , I reminded myself, not sure I was ready to consider the idea. She would be forty-one on her next nameday and we were halfway there already. My right hand rose from where it lingered at the curve of her hip to play in her loose hair, twirling one of the silky ends around my fingers in old, old habit. My thumb then stretched out to run along her full lips, which parted slightly under my touch.

There were lines on her face that weren’t there before. Smile lines, laugh lines, a few worry lines too. Nearly twenty years’ worth. And the notion that I’d spent most of those last twenty years in her company never ceased to thrill or surprise me, as she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever known, on either side of the sea, and I still didn’t deserve her.

I would _never_ deserve her.

But I loved her. I loved those little crinkled lines and crow’s feet around her eyes and the sides of her mouth. Each and every one. I loved the few grey strands in her hair. The ones that blended so well with the silver-blonde that no one who didn’t share her bed would notice at all. 

I loved _her_. So fiercely. So ardently. The passage of years only strengthened that love, in both body and soul. But as she lay sprawled over me, with the lingering taste of her heady, honeyed kisses on my lips and skin, it was her body I was thinking of most noticeably.

And she knew it. She _felt_ it.

“You see?” she grinned again, mischievously. She still liked when she got her way. That would certainly never change. “Not so old yet.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded with my own half-growl, pulling her close for another kiss, which she willingly joined, smiling on a taste she’d been coming back to for almost two decades. 

She asked, “Do you want your gift now or later?”

“How about now _and_ later?” I bantered with her, knowing her answer well enough.

“Don’t be greedy,” she purred in my ear but she’d already shifted languidly, her lips trailing away and down, both hands spread and fingers playing in the mess of hair on my chest. She moved down further before straightening to sit up, perched on top of me, her knees pressed on either side of my hips. She brought her index finger to her lips in a faux inquisitive manner, tapping that finger twice while shrugging, “Although I suppose it _is_ your nameday.”

“Aye, it is,” I answered, knowing this game. I reached up and pulled her back down again. She came with no resistance, a little shriek of pleasure escaping her lips.

Our kisses continued for some time, growing faster, wetter, deeper. She moaned into my mouth just a little as I pressed her closer, our bodies finding the familiar rhythm that led to a familiar song. Before we went too deep, her lips slid off mine almost reluctantly.

“Fine, we’ll have to be quick though,” she warned. “I still have a list of things to do before…”

She broke off too suddenly and I watched her complexion pale a little. It was a slip of the tongue, but a telling one. It wasn’t the words that gave her away, which seemed innocent enough. It was the guilty expression on her face.

“Daenerys…?” I kept my tight grip on her, this time so she couldn’t squirm away.

There was a slight pause, while she tried to scramble for an explanation. But the truth won out.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she replied, regaining her color fast enough. The guilt was gone, replaced by saucy defiance. “It’s your _sixtieth_ nameday, Jorah. If you thought you were going to get away without some sort of celebration…”

“How many guests?” I sighed, hoping for under twenty.

She bit her lip, before dropping her chin to my chest, to muffle the answer against my skin. She mumbled and I missed the number. But ever too adorable, I forgave her instantly, no matter the answer. Though my expression remained stern, on principal, and I grunted a disapproving “hmm?”

“About a hundred,” she admitted, quickly jumping in ahead of the groan that escaped my throat. She pointed out, oh-so-helpfully, “It’s not my fault you’re so popular in the village.”

“One hundred people, here? Today?” I tried not to betray how little the idea appealed to me, and failed completely. I liked our neighbors well enough, but the thought of making conversation with that many people…“I think I’d rather just stay in bed.”

“Don’t be such a bear, Jorah,” Daenerys chided. “Gods, you sound like your father. He told me he was going to be down in his workshop all day tinkering with that boat he’s building.”

“Maybe I’ll join him,” I muttered.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” she swatted my chest lightly with a flick of her finger. The swat had all the sting of a feather. “Do you want to break your children’s hearts?”

I groaned again. She wasn’t playing fair.

“They love you, Jorah. They’re proud of you. And they love to show you off to others,” she insisted, reaching up to push a lock of my hair back from my forehead, while musing, “Even if you so rarely let them.”

“They should show you off instead,” I countered. 

“They do that too,” she gave me that look again, eyebrows rising a little. “You know, Jeorgianna and Aemon told me that I should have Daenielle give you the news, since you never say no to her.”

“That’s not true. I’ve said no to her plen—”

“Shall I go wake her now and you can prove it?” the glint in her eyes was all too knowing. 

“No, that’s not...,” my words drifted off, not convincing either of us. My grip on Daenerys remained strong, unwilling to let her leave our bed for many reasons. One of which was that I had a terrible habit of being unable to say “no” to my youngest child. 

I growled again, but this time in a muted way, low and with resignation, “Let them come.”

I suppose it was too much to expect to spend the entire day with just us and Father and the children. 

“I’ll make it up to you,” Daenerys promised, her eyes going soft and sweet again. She’d shifted her position and one of her hands had wandered down beneath the sheets again. With a smirk on her face, she made it very clear on how she might keep that promise. My body responded immediately, ever hers to command, and I couldn’t keep up the sour mood even if I tried.

“Now or later?” I repeated the same words from earlier.

“How about now _and_ later,” she teased, in a sultry voice that didn’t keep. 

For she was laughing, as my large fingers played at the softer, more ticklish skin at her slender waist. And then her mouth found mine once more and we were soon tangling together wordlessly under those sheets.


	3. The Bear's Banquet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #bearcubs or #teenbearcubs in this case ;)
> 
> To salzrand - So. Much. Love. As you know, I adore everything you do but my writer-girl heart sings a special kind of song whenever you draw the Mormont-Targaryen kids <3 <3 <3

**_Daenerys_ **

“Mama, where do you want me to put these?” Jeorgianna asked me from the far side of the terrace. 

She held up two bottles of red wine in one hand. Two more were cradled in the crook of her other arm. I could see Seti Vymair’s rose-and-brambles mark on the bottles from where I stood, ten feet away, in the breezeway of my summer kitchen. I was surprised he hadn’t brought more, as the vineyard owner was generous when it came to large celebrations and never turned up to a feast empty-handed. 

Jeorgianna added, “He’s having his sons carry up two more crates.”

_Ah…_

“I’ll take them,” I told her, squeezing past a few of the women who had gathered in the kitchen, to lay out an assortment of dishes on long tables that spilled out onto the terrace. They used the stone ledges of the balcony when they ran out of room on the tables and the air was filled with sweet and savory scents that were all too tempting. 

I hadn’t had a chance to eat breakfast, having made a later start to the day than I’d planned. 

But we’d serve the food soon, as the throng of guests had doubled in the last half hour and they continued to trickle in, gathering on the terrace, the yard and in the gardens. Sunlight alternated with bits of shade, as white clouds darted through the blue skies above, impervious to any whisper of rain. I blessed the weather gods for playing nice as I’m not sure we could have fit all the guests inside the house.

As I stepped out of the breezeway, my eyes briefly scanned the crowds around our house. The number of people was almost overwhelming, their chatter filling my ears with a constant hum. I picked out familiar faces as I searched for one among the rest. There! My eyes caught sight of Jorah beside the rose bushes in the front garden, speaking with a few seasoned fishermen that he knew well. 

He laughed with them, his deeper smile lines visible even from a distance.

Despite all his miserable grumbling this morning, he looked like he was enjoying himself, which made my heart swell. I knew he hated these sorts of things and usually avoided them at all costs, but his reluctance was misplaced. He was very adept at social gatherings, despite hating every part of them, as men were drawn to him for his practical wisdom and women…

My husband was a very handsome man, despite his years. And although I loved him for far more than his physical appearance, I couldn’t help but feel some pride as I looked over and saw him standing there, tall and broad as ever, with that shock of silver in his red-blond locks giving him an air of distinguished maturity that no one else in the gathering could manage. 

At least not to my eyes.

Coming up the cobblestone path, Seti Vymair joined the men, uncorking the wine bottle in his hand and pouring drinks into empty goblets, which he’d carried in with the wine. There was a short lull in their conversation as the wine was poured out and I watched Jorah’s eyes flicker up and wander briefly, searching…

He smiled when he caught my waiting gaze, finding what he was looking for. I smiled back. Both little smiles that came and went in secret. There were too many guests between us and too much mingling left to be done. 

I wouldn’t see him again for most of the day. But later… 

_Later…_ it was a promise, renewed again by a wordless, loving glance across the yard. 

As Jorah took a full glass from Seti’s outstretched hand, I reached Jeorgianna and gathered two of her cumbersome wine bottles against my chest.

“I have two pitchers in the house that we can pour the bottles into. And I want to bring out the pies we baked this morning,” I told her. “Come with me?”

Jeorgianna nodded her assent, always willing to help. Our shared gaze was nearly level, violet eyes to blue, as my oldest daughter was now sixteen and as tall as me. Perhaps half an inch taller, if I was being honest. Given that Jorah was their father, I had a sneaking suspicion that _all_ of my children would be taller than me. 

I was already forced to look _up_ at Aemon, and the boy wasn’t yet fourteen. It was making it difficult to scold him on anything, as he would adopt his father’s crooked grin and pat my head with an “I know, Mama,” that was about as sincere as his promise that he hadn’t been letting Daenielle fly on her green dragon, Seadancer, when he took her down to the cliffs alone.

Not that he could have stopped her. 

Daenielle is more stubborn than the rest of us put together and the most self-assured nine-year-old alive. She’s a little bear, through and through. I blame her grandfather, who she takes after to the point of the old man and the little girl being almost indistinguishable.

Indeed, as Jeorgianna and I walked into the more quiet part of the house, I found my youngest daughter carrying a plate of food, heaped high with roasted vegetables, darker meats and other things that Daenielle would never choose on her own, as she was a finicky eater and stuck mostly to fruit and sweeter tastes. And there wasn’t a single peach or lemon wedge on that plate. 

“And where are you headed with that, Daenielle?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Grandfather asked me to bring a plate down to him,” she replied without guilt, completely oblivious to why I might not be pleased with the idea.

“Oh, no you won’t,” I said as I set the wine bottles down on the kitchen table and gently swept the plate of steaming food from my little girl’s hands. At least Daenielle was still a foot shorter than me, forced to look up when I spoke. 

It _almost_ gave my tone some gravitas. 

I placed the plate of food on the highest shelf I could reach. Then I put my hands on my hips and gave Daenielle a look that I hoped she’d take down to Jeor’s workshop with her. “You can tell Grandfather that if he wants to eat, he can come up here and join the celebration.”

“He says he’d rather fight the army of the dead again. And he said he has to finish the boat before he dies,” Daenielle quoted, giving me a prepared speech. She wasn’t disturbed by my stern stance. She was sad to disappoint me, I’m sure. But her grandfather’s excuses held logic too. And my children were too easily swayed by Mormont logic.

“At this point, _I’ll_ likely die before your grandfather,” I huffed, sighing with just a little exasperation, “He’s given me enough grey hairs.”

“Grandfather said you’d say that,” Daenielle added evenly. She had her hands clasped behind her back, her posture steady, as she continued, “He said to tell you that he has nothing to do with your grey hairs and that Papa is the only one you can blame for them.”

Then she gave me a half-smile and shrugged, blameless, only the messenger.

“I just need him to show his face for _one_ hour. So that people know that the Mormonts don’t live in caves,” I muttered to Jeorgianna, who was suppressing a smirk beside me. She knew I was fighting a losing battle but admired me for trying anyway. 

I turned back to Daenielle, kneeling down to her level and reaching up to adjust the small, silver diadem that I’d slipped into her hair this morning. There were tiny, white starflowers braided into the delicate silver and it complemented her shoulder-length hair well, the few silver-blonde strands falling through all the red like a stray tie of silver off the pretty headband.

Her party dress too, with its light blue shades bringing out the color of her eyes. She was a little princess, with one very important court of influence—over all Mormont men.

With nearly pleading eyes, I begged her to use that influence on the Old Bear. “Please, darling, go convince him to come. _Just_ for an hour. That’s all I ask.”

“Sure, Mama,” Daenielle replied, willing as always. But the almost pitying look on her little features told me not to expect any miracles. Still, she promised, “I’ll try.” 

“Thank you,” I said, tugging her close to kiss her cheek soundly. She kissed me back and then skipped out of the house, down to Jeor’s workshop at the bottom of the hill to carry my message. 

As I straightened up, I ran my fingers down the length of the single braid that fell over my shoulder, thinking—on the food, on the guests. Counting. Did we have enough tables? What if it rained?

I was feeling a little scattered. The sheer size of the gathering had started to overwhelm me, but Jeorgianna was there, ready to lend me support. While I spoke with Daenielle, she’d found the two pitchers in the cupboards and was now pouring the wine bottles out slowly, careful not to spill any.

“You don’t need to worry, Mama. Daenielle will bring Grandfather up to the house,” she said, adding encouragingly, “And everyone’s having a wonderful time.”

“I know,” I sighed again, at myself. I leaned towards her, shoulder brushing shoulder with affection. “Thank you for being such a help.”

Jeorgianna allowed a little smile to curve over her lips. Of all the children, she was the most like Jorah, though with her distinctly Targaryen features and that hair, my hair, she looked the least like him. Except those blue eyes, of course. Like her father. Like her sister and her brother. Blue as the winter skies over Bear Island, so my husband and his father tell me.

But her natural reserve was very much like Jorah’s. Her quiet daring too. She was nearly unshakeable, rarely rattled by anything. No doubt our trip to Westeros when she was still a child accounted for some of that.

Bithia, one of the village healers, had begun borrowing her on occasion, as she said Jeorgianna was steady in the presence of blood and illness, especially for one so young. She was as steadfast as the Mormont family words, all calmness in a storm. 

And Jeorgianna’s calm spirit could tame the wildest creature. This wasn’t untested. I saw it happen with my own eyes.

Jeorgianna’s black dragon—it was the largest of the three. The one that had a temper and could be provoked to anger with just a playful nip by its younger siblings, when they were all little more than hatchlings. The black dragon was the first to breathe fire, the first to fly off over the sea and stay away from the cliffs for a night, worrying us all that the young thing had been discovered or captured or who knows what else.

_Dark Sister._ Jeorgianna had named her dragon after Visenya Targaryen’s famous blade. 

But like Visenya Targaryen, Jeorgianna had the last say on what her Dark Sister would do. The dragon’s natural surliness softened under her touch and the dragon _listened_ to Jeorgianna. Which was important, especially at the beginning. 

They are dragons, Khaleesi…Jorah had stressed this stark fact a number of times, impressing upon me the danger. 

All the world over, there wasn’t another dragon living. There wasn’t a price that could be paid, by the warlocks in Qarth, by the priests in Asshai, by the kings of Westeros and the merchant-princes of the Free Cities—neither blood, nor gold, nor any spell could conjure a dragon.

And yet, our children had three. Three _living_ dragons. Fire made flesh.

We took pains to keep them hidden away from prying eyes. The cove they’d been born in, with its high cliffs and rumored hauntings, proved a perfect home and the dragons grew up without incident, the few sightings by fishermen and sailors taken about as seriously as those tales of mermaids on the open water and sparking, violet fingers of fire that they said played on the masts of ships in a thunderstorm. 

The cove _was_ haunted in the end, the moans of a ghost and the screech of baby dragons becoming one and the same to any boat or traveler on the road who happened to hear their eerie echo.

If Dark Sister had been under the care of anyone else, I’m afraid that dragon would have flown up and down the coast at will, a black menace in the skies, terrorizing the village, slaughtering livestock and burning the countryside for sport.

But with Jeorgianna, Dark Sister learned that fish tasted as good as sheep and that the vast Jade Sea was a dragon’s domain, with all her restless energy conquered by skimming the waters on a clear day and flying up towards the white clouds above.

Sometimes with my daughter on that beast’s back.

“Don’t worry, Mama,” Aemon and his comforting tone answered my fretting too often. 

He’d inherited that tone from his father, along with his height and infuriating practicality. He explained, “We used to fly when you didn’t know about it and now you do. And you see? Nothing happened. So think about all the years you _didn’t_ worry because you didn’t know.”

“That makes me feel _so_ much better, Aemon,” I would grumble to my son. 

“You’re welcome,” he would answer, either missing my sardonic tone or ignoring it completely.

_Oh, Aemon._

All those questions he used to ask as a little boy had paid off. He was so clever. But he knew how to use it well, how to hold back, how to read a room or a person. He knew how to charm…and he knew how to rile up his older sister, as no one else in the entire world could manage. 

Not me, not Jorah, not her friends, not even a tempestuous dragon.

As Jeorgianna and I took a moment to collect our thoughts before rejoining the party, Aemon wandered into the house, with a ripe peach in his hand. He threw the fruit a few feet into the air, casually, before catching it again.

“Papa’s talking to Mathias Serik,” he mentioned to Jeorgianna, _so_ off-handedly. 

Mathias—the young man who brought my daughter flowers, who wrote her songs, who would kiss her as soon as he worked up the courage. Who my husband would run off as soon as possible.

“Oh Gods, no!” Jeorgianna groaned, setting the pitcher down on the table hard enough that wine sloshed from its sides, splashing on the dark wood.

“Careful…,” I managed but she was gone already, dashing out of the kitchen to try and intercept her father’s discussion with the young man, whatever good it would do. As much as Jorah loved Jeorgianna, this was one subject on which I doubted she’d ever change his mind.

_Ever._

“Was that really necessary?” I cocked an eyebrow at Aemon, as I cleaned up the errant stains of wine with a rag.

“What?” he held up his hands, playing innocent. His smirk said otherwise. But he insisted, running his fingers over the face of that peach, “He’s right outside. Grandfather found him skulking down in the hedges by the gate and brought him up to see Papa.”

“To be terrorized by Papa, you mean,” I replied.

His continued smirk answered for him. Well, at least something finally brought Jeor out of hiding. So I was counting the whole thing as a victory. And not that I’d admit it to my son, but Mathias _really_ should know better. This wasn’t the first time that young man had willingly entered the bear cave completely unprepared. 

“Stop playing with that peach, unless you’re going to eat it. Grab this pitcher and your grandfather’s plate,” I instructed Aemon, nodding to the nearby shelf. I was glad to see he had to stretch a little for it. That wouldn’t always be the case. He put the peach aside and grabbed one of the pies as well, balancing it on his head.

“If you drop that pie, Aemon…” I warned him.

“I won’t, Mama,” he assured me, not out of any hubris or arrogance. He was confident in his own abilities, as always. It was a fine line but he walked it well. And at only thirteen.

_The world isn’t ready for you, my son._ I thought, not for the first time.

But I said nothing more about it, keeping my smile to myself. I grabbed the other pie and pitcher of wine before we rejoined the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So dragons. In my pre-writing research, I discovered that a dragon's gender isn't set in stone...which is perfect, because I never liked that they were all boys anyway. Especially because Dark Sister is such a badass name. #Rawr


	4. Fathers & Sons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The #MormontFeels are strong in this chapter, both in words and pretty art <3 #SummertimeBears #StillObsessingOverBestDetail ;)

**_Jeor_ **

When I was a young man, I never had any interest in seeing the world. I was born on Bear Island and I assumed I’d die there, like my father and his father before him. 

Like Julia, her funeral shroud sewn with cream lace and mountain flowers.

Later, of course, I thought I’d be laid to rest at Castle Black. Or lost to the snow drifts above the Wall. There was little difference between the Island and Castle Black, save the distance from the sea. The North is all shades of white and grey, scents of spruce and pine, wood smoke and crisp, starry nights that peer down upon us with sharp, silver eyes.

A cold, hard place. But the North was home for my entire life. And bears like their caves.

For seventy years, I’d traveled south of Winterfell only a handful of times. I declined an invitation to King’s Landing for Robert Baratheon’s coronation, just as I had declined the invitations for the feasts of Prince Rhaegar’s birth and the wedding of Aerys and Rhaella before that. 

The former because, by that time, I’d finally decided to leave the Island and cast my lot in with the brothers of the Night’s Watch and the latter because bears and dragons had never mixed well, in my experience.

I was woefully mistaken on that score, as I would discover later. As my half-Mormont, half-Targaryen grandchildren remind me every day… 

And if someone had told me back then that I would be spending my twilight years living along the warm, shimmering coast of an eastern sea, or that I would find myself answering to “Grandfather” and “Father” daily, I would have thought they were stark, raving mad. Or cruel. Or some potent mixture of both.

Perhaps the gods are trying to offer me recompense for stealing my wife away so early. Or perhaps they need to pay down the debt that was paid in the Haunted Forest the night the dead came to Castle Black. 

Perhaps they have nothing to do with it at all. 

I won’t question my good fortune. That’s for men who wish to know the secrets of the universe. The only secrets I wish to know are that Jeorgianna prefers daisies to all other flowers and that Aemon still hopes to see bears someday and that Daenielle’s favorite spot in the whole world is currently located on a clean corner of my workshop table, where she often sits, keeping me company as I work, asking me to tell her stories about her grandmother, frosted waterfalls and the deep blue color of a sea at the top of the world.

Jorah and I built the workshop together, in the year following Aemon Targaryen’s death. We’d built his funeral pyre together so it seemed reasonable to try something else. 

And with every stone set and every timber nailed in place, we seemed to build back some of what we’d lost over the last however many years. Slowly, carefully, but with all our old rhythms rediscovered, from when we worked together on Bear Island, when he was still just a boy and Julia was still humming her songs in the corridors of the Keep.

It’s a strange thing. A _wonderfully_ strange thing. To circle back to where you begin. To find home once more, when you least expect it. 

And half a world away from where you might have guessed.

Not in my _wildest_ dreams would I have imagined this ending. But as the years pass, the doubts and disbelief grow fainter. The old wounds heal. Enough that my son comes down to seek my counsel, often, and even when he doesn’t need it. 

As he did this morning, ducking under the open door frame of the workshop and stepping inside, with a preoccupied look on his face. 

Daenielle was perched up on her favorite corner, her legs swinging a few feet above the scattered wood shavings on the stone floor. Her fingers were running along the grooved scales of one of Aemon’s carved fish. Aemon always kept his hands busy when he came down to my workshop. My shelves of tools and materials were interspersed with a collection of Aemon’s small carved animals—fish, goats, horses. Dragons.

Looking up from the unfinished hull, I watched Jorah enter. Soon, his hand came to rest on Daenielle’s shoulder. She tipped her head back at his gentle touch, looking up at her father. She hadn’t heard him come in, but she wasn’t surprised to find him standing there. She answered his warm gaze with a sweet smile.

“Hello, Papa,” she said.

“Your mother’s looking for you, lass,” Jorah told her, his hand coming up from her shoulder to briefly squeeze those striking silver-blonde strands in the little girl’s hair, before nodding his head up towards the house. 

He wanted to talk to me alone, that was obvious. If Daenielle refused to go, he’d likely be powerless to force her. She’d conquered him from the cradle. But my youngest granddaughter was a good girl and hopped off the table immediately, off to find her mother, as he asked. 

“See you, Grandfather,” she waved to me.

“See you, Daenielle,” I called after her, unable to wave back, as my hands were both occupied, in the middle of affixing the next strake over the length of the rowboat’s hull, occasionally reaching for treenails and iron bolts that I’d piled on a stool beside me.

“This is coming along,” Jorah commented as he came closer, his hand following the length of the sturdy frame before taking hold of the strake to help me keep the planking steady. It would be a small, simple rowboat when it was finished, nothing grand. But it would suit me just fine.

“Aye,” I answered, knowing that he didn’t come down here to talk about boats. Using a slotted clamp, I reached the end of the row and held it fast, setting my tools aside afterwards. Jorah stepped back as well. I’d been standing for some time and welcomed the break. My bones were getting old, like the rest of me. 

I found a seat on one of the benches in the shop and waited for Jorah to tell me why he’d sought me out. He hesitated for a moment, letting the silence stretch without filling it. I didn’t mind. We weren’t much for small talk, either of us.

“Do you remember that young boy from the other side of the village who died last month?” Jorah asked, adding, “The one Jeorgianna told us about.”

“Yes,” I replied. It was a small village and the boy’s death was tragic, as he was younger than Daenielle and fell prey to an illness that should have spared him. The Shaking Sickness is no death sentence. He could have lived for many years with it. Would have. If he lived closer to a city that kept dreamwine in stock, as it was known to best calm the tremors that plagued those afflicted.

Jorah nodded, taking a seat on one of the high stools in the place, leaning forward and bringing his hands together on his knees. It still shocked me sometimes, to see those deeper lines on my boy’s hands. But I suppose we were both getting older—we’d celebrated his sixtieth nameday only a few weeks ago.

There’s no escaping the passage of time. Still, I remembered his young hands when they first learned how to string fishing line or gathered a bouquet of wild aster for his mother like it was yesterday. Unlined, untested.

“The herbalists keep dreamwine but it sours too fast,” Jorah mused. “Our ships take three weeks to travel through the Jade Gates to Qarth and back again when their stores run low.”

“That’s true,” I wondered why he was telling me this.

“It would take a dragon two days,” he said flatly, his eyes flickering from his hands up to meet mine. “If that…”

I’m sure my eyebrows shot up a little and my gaze certainly narrowed. The implication in his voice was clear. He was making a connection in his head that I hadn’t thought of. For speed, a sailing ship with the most favorable wind had no chance against a dragon. Aemon claimed Jeorgianna and Dark Sister could make it to the Pearl Islands and back in less than two hours. The children had timed it.

And those islands were at least ten leagues from the bay that the dragons called home.

But we had enough trouble keeping the dragons out of sight without using them for transport. What was Jorah thinking of?

He read the wariness in my expression well, expecting it. I noticed a similar hesitation in his own and wondered why he brought it up at all if he harbored my same doubts…

He explained, his voice dropping and shoulders lifting just a little. “Jeorgianna’s got a notion in her head that the dragons might be able to do some good. You know how she is. And there’s sense in what she’s thinking. That boy shouldn’t have died.”

I nodded grimly at that. In my life, I’d seen too many who fit the old adage: _The old must die, but the young may…_

And far more often than they should. My granddaughter had a gentle, kind heart. I wasn’t surprised to know she wanted to lift some of the misery and suffering from the world. 

“It’s not just dreamwine—milk of the poppy, even hemlock. There’s always short supply. And we won’t be able to keep the dragons hidden away forever. Too many sailors have seen them flying up the coast and those ghost stories will turn to more solid rumors eventually,” Jorah admitted, to himself, to me. His hands fidgeted. “But I…don’t know.”

He didn’t like the idea and wanted me to talk him out of it. So he could talk Jeorgianna out of it. 

“She wants to take the dragons to Qarth?” I asked, evenly.

“She wants to take one of the dragons. Dark Sister,” he clarified. He shook his head on my question, having already denied at least part of her plan, “But not Qarth. It’s too dangerous. There’s been unrest since before Xaro Xhoan Daxos crowned himself king and I’ve never trusted a soul in that city anyway. The warlocks are worse than the priests in Asshai for lies and shadow tricks.”

He paused, frowning, a little angry at himself for even considering the idea. But my son was an intelligent man, practical too, and as kind-hearted as Jeorgianna. She took after both her parents in that way. He didn’t like to see unnecessary death and if there was a way to save even a few, he’d feel compelled to try it.

“There’s a secluded bay on the outskirts of Port Yhos,” he allowed. Port Yhos was a smaller harbor city just west of Qarth. Still controlled by the Qarthians but more focused on trade than tricks. Jorah had expressed his preference for dealing with Port Yhos over Qarth many times. “The sailors use it in bad weather. If Dark Sister dropped us off there, we’d be within a few hours walk of the dock-side markets.”

“We?”

“Daenerys would kill me if I let Jeorgianna go alone.”

“Have you discussed this with her?”

Jorah shook his head, “I wanted your thoughts first.”

_My thoughts?_ Of its own accord, I found my left hand running through the white hairs of my beard, fingers crossing my lips twice. I considered.

“Better you than me riding on one of those beasts,” I muttered, huffing on the only thought I was sure on.

_Dragons._

I shook my head on the very notion, still almost unbelievable. All these years later. I suppose it should be no surprise that dragons might live in a world where the dead attempted to slaughter the living. But if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes…

I remembered the day they named them—or Jeorgianna and Aemon’s anyway. We were standing up on a patch of soft green moss, up on the cliffs in full sunlight, beside hidden nests that Jorah had helped the children fashion for their unlikely pets. 

“Dark Sister,” Jeorgianna tried out the name a few times, and the hatchling-dragon crawling up her shoulder just raised its scaly head, sniffing a sea breeze speckled with salt and citrus. Jeorgianna was confident in her choice but looked to her mother for final approval, “After Visenya Targaryen’s blade?”

Daenerys nodded and smiled brightly at Jeorgianna, before turning that same smile on the baby in her arms. Daenielle was awake and making faces, learning how to blow kisses with Daenerys’s help. Daenerys took the baby’s hand, gently laid it against her own mouth before pulling her fingers away with a soft kiss.

“What was Aegon’s sword called?” Aemon had stood between Jorah and Daenerys. His dragon was curled up and sleeping on his forearm, comfortable in the boy’s arms. As comfortable as the day he plucked him out of the sand. 

“Blackfyre,” Daenerys and Jorah answered at the same time, sharing a quick, bemused glance between them, perhaps guessing Aemon’s response to the news. I would discover that my son and his wife had a way of speaking volumes with only a handful of words between them. Then and now.

Aemon’s face scrunched up a little at their answer, not exactly pleased with the name. His dragon’s scales shone in the sun like liquid gold and Aemon wouldn’t be willing to overlook that glaring detail. The name just didn’t fit. And yet, he wanted to follow his sister’s lead.

My grandson thought on it for a long while, his little expression turning thoughtful. Aemon still adopts that same expression when he’s thinking deeply on something to this day, even though he’s nearly taller than his mother now. 

I remember Daenerys reminded him that nothing need be decided right away. Daenielle’s dragon would go years without a name as she was still a baby at the time. We used to call it “Daenielle’s Dragon” enough that I think the green dragon would answer to that title as well as Seadancer, even now. And perhaps “Rhaegal” too, as Daenerys used to call him by that name occasionally, attempting to influence Daenielle’s choice in the future.

_No, Mama. Seadancer._

And Aemon was just as stubborn. But he found a compromise at last. All by himself. And he looked at his father and then he looked at me, grinning widely, pleased with what he’d come up with.

“Bearfyre,” Aemon decided. “I want to name him Bearfyre.”

I’ll blame the sea breeze for the water I felt sting my eyes at that name, and the grinning little boy who spoke it.

And so the gold dragon was christened. And his green brother only a few years after. Dark Sister, Bearfyre and Seadancer. The three dragons of the Jade Sea. Born amidst salt and smoke, growing up as fast as the children who had tamed them. Dark Sister’s wingspan was nearly as large as a mid-size fishing vessel down at the docks, measured from bow to stern.

No, they wouldn’t be a secret forever. Jorah was right about that.

Nor would the children always make decisions that would keep them safe and out of harm’s way. No matter how much their mother and father or I should wish it.

I said nothing more as we both contemplated the idea in silence for a while. I hadn’t talked him out of it. I couldn’t. And he knew it.

Jorah sighed, “Now I have to convince Daenerys…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book references - you can probably infer this from the context, but The Shaking Sickness in Westeros/Essos is comparable to epilepsy. And dreamwine is an opiate used to treat the seizures.


	5. A Wound That Festers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In December, I adopted a head canon from exultedshores (and her amazing holiday fic "how long and dreary is the night") that will be true in every fic I write until the end of time - that Grey Worm secretly loves melon. Almost as much as he loves Missandei of Naath. Because he does. It is known ;)

**_Grey Worm_ **

Missandei says this one should tell you what happened in the time before the Day of the Storms, the day Master Kraznys dragged Missandei of Naath down to the Walk of Punishment to nail her to a cross. 

_I_ should tell you this. She has told me to use this word more often. 

_“I”…not “this one.” Try to remember._

But it is difficult. There is no “I” in the ranks of Unsullied. We are one. Separate arms of one being. Hands and feet of our masters. We move as one, we act as one. 

We are the sum of many. We are nothing if not Unsullied. Only vermin—rats, fleas, toads, worms. Fit only for gutters and sewers. 

This is what I was told from the moment I was taken. This is what they would say to us every day we were trained. This and many other things. The things they made us do, the things they made us believe—I do not wish to tell you those things.

But I can tell you of Missandei of Naath. I can tell you that her voice is like the music of red and blue songbirds in the highest canopies of jungles in the Summer Islands and that her smile is like the honey-sweet taste of ripe melon.

Missandei asks me sometimes why I caught her that day that the krubo and the fat one came to see Master Kraznys. But I cannot tell her that. I do not know what made my hand reach out. I just know that I did not wish to see Missandei fall.

I could _not_ let Missandei fall.

This one—no, I was always a good soldier. From when I was very young, I was never strongest or biggest. But I was bravest. Always bravest. I have never known fear. Not of death. Not of pain. 

I have felt pain. I have seen death. I have survived both. So there is nothing to fear. The other soldiers listen to me and follow me because they also want to believe there is nothing to fear. When the masters would give us orders, it was my foot that moved first, followed by all the others. 

Even if I had never been taken and made Unsullied, I think I would have been a soldier. But a free one, fighting my own battles, instead of those of the masters of Astapor and all those they try to sell us to.

There have been no great wars in Slaver’s Bay for many years and nothing but small skirmishes in the Free Cities. Those in the west, across the water, have made peace with each other and have no need for slave armies. Even if they did, King Stannis of the House Baratheon has decreed that any slave will be free if they set foot on western shores, no matter the heavy price paid by their master. 

Peace is bad for my master’s business. And so Master Kraznys has been unable to secure buyers for many of the Unsullied. He continues to train more but he is running low on quarters and supplies to keep them. Even though he will not admit this, we know. We have seen his frustration, we have been fed his meager rations.

And we have watched his failures.

A corsair king from the Summer Sea was the last to make a large purchase from Master Kraznys. He bought two thousand Unsullied and sailed away to plunder rubies and diamonds from the coasts of Sothoryos. The pirate had promised to return and purchase another two thousand with the treasures he looted, but it has been years and there are rumors the corsair king and all the Unsullied who went with him are long dead.

A few of us are sold to Lys and Volantis to serve as house guards in the homes of wealthy men. Some of us are traded to the copper mines in the Ghiscari hills surrounding Meereen, to act as sentries against those who would try to overtake the mines. Many of us are sent to the fighting pits. For what else are we made if not to fight and die at the masters’ pleasure?

But most of us are left to Master Kraznys, awaiting a buyer who will pay him our weight in gold and silver. He will not reduce his prices. The longer he must wait, the angrier he becomes. He leases us to the city of Astapor to conduct daily patrols, as he is running low on resources. He has been less than frugal and his father’s wealth is nearly spent.

He thinks we do not know this. But we do.

He has made too many Unsullied and cannot feed and house us all. So he will order Unsullied to stand in the sun until they fall to the red bricks in a heap. He will dip some of us in hot oil to see how long we can stand the bath or flay our skin for sport, like a butcher.

He has grown bored and, in his boredom, he grows cruel and vicious. Like a starving rat in the sewer.

There are some who say that Unsullied do not have thoughts of their own. That we do not hope or dream or see beyond what our masters command. That we are our masters’ arms and legs, made of only spears and shields. Our flesh is not our own.

We do not feel, they say. Even if we bleed the same as other men.

But this is not true. This has not been true for many years. 

_Fester._ Missandei has taught me this word in the common tongue. She says that a wound festers when it is not cleaned. It turns red and black and angry. It waits. It takes its time. It starts to ooze before it rots, before it bleeds, before it _kills_. 

Slaver’s Bay had begun to ooze. And Master Kraznys failed to see it. He failed to see many things. He had become blind to what happened in his own palace. 

Two moons before the Day of the Storms, I returned from patrolling the streets of Astapor at dusk. I was tasked to report to my master at the end of every evening, to give him an accounting of all that had taken place during my patrol and to give him any messages that I had received from the other masters in the plazas. 

I went alone to my master while my men went to the barracks. I was the unspoken Commander of the Unsullied. Unsullied have no ranks as we are one. But I was Commander nevertheless. No one questioned my authority to walk through my master’s courtyard. Or my loyalty to do his bidding. 

There was a small shed off the palace courtyard, where the gardeners kept their tools for pruning fig trees, myrtle and agave. Above the shed, the full moon was rising. It cast a silver-blue glimmer on the courtyard. The moon glimmer reflected on short grass and clay, all speckled with sprinklings of evening dew.

I heard cicadas buzzing up on the stone walls and the noise of squat toads in pools of water pockmarking the lower gardens, but otherwise the night was quiet, still and peaceful.

But this one was _not_ at peace. 

At the Plaza of Pride, Master Amirys had given me a message to deliver to Master Kraznys. The scroll felt heavy in my hand. As if made of iron or lead. I did not like Master Amirys’s expression when he handed me that message. His face was hard and stern, as always. But there was shame in his face too.

I did not know the contents of that scroll. I could not read or write in my own language. I saw only black lines on parchment.

I should not have guessed at its contents or thought of it at all. I was charged with having no thoughts of my own.

But I did have thoughts. Many thoughts. 

I saw a flicker of light burning in the little shed. It might have been a candle left behind or the palace gardeners working late. It had nothing to do with me. I should have kept to the path and gone to my master. 

But I did not. 

The latch on the shed lifted with only little sounds. I pushed the wooden door open with the flat of my hand. I found Missandei in that shed, bent over a book. The candle was dim in the shed and she was holding the pages close to the light. When she saw me, she jumped from the rough bench she had been sitting on. She jumped like hot oil had been dropped on her skin.

When she saw it was me, she let out a small sigh of relief.

“I…,” she said, but then could say nothing more.

Missandei and I had been owned by Master Kraznys for most of our lives. We passed each other in the palace grounds and the courtyard and the plazas many times a day. Until this night, we had never exchanged words that were not in service to our master. Not a single one. 

But some things are not worthy of words. Some things do not translate into any of Missandei’s nineteen languages.

I had been looking at her for ten years. She had been looking back. Since that day I kept her from falling, we had built something from stolen glances. And that was somehow enough. 

If she thought I would tell Master Kraznys where she was and what she was doing, she was mistaken. But I do not think she thought that. Not when I saw a little smile hint at Missandei’s mouth. 

I did not want to, but I chased away her smile very soon…by holding out the message in my hand.

“Read this?” I asked her, in Valyrian. Her eyes flickered to the missive in my outstretched hand, seeing the rushed script of the masters written on the scroll. Her eyes flickered back to me. Her hands came together at her waist, running over each other with nervousness as she swallowed. 

She was unsure. But she was not afraid. Missandei is braver than most Unsullied. I nodded, encouraging her, “Quickly.”

She hesitated only for moments. Her hands broke free of each other and she took the message. It was not sealed. The masters had no reason to seal their messages. No Unsullied would know how to read their words. And even if we could, we would never look at a scroll in our hands unless ordered to do so. Just as we never heard the words they spoke in our presence or saw the terrible things they did right before our eyes.

We were not men. We were machines. 

At least, that’s what they thought. That’s what they depended on. They would never dream of anything else.

It was not Unsullied who failed to dream.

Missandei scanned the contents of the letter, turning the curling paper towards the candlelight. I watched her dark brown eyes dance as she read it and understood its full meaning. Her breathing changed. Her mouth drew grim around the edges. When she was finished, she looked at me.

She could have pressed the message back into my hands and fled from me, back to the house and her bunk in the slave’s quarters. I could have snatched it back and continued on my way, pretending that I did not want to know what that message said. We both could have done things very differently.

In another life, perhaps we did.

But not in this one. In this one, Missandei passed the note back into my hand, her fingers brushing over mine very softly before she pulled them away. She gave a sharp shake of her head, knowing that she was about to commit herself to crossing a line that she could not cross back over again.

I had crossed it just by entering this shed. No, much longer ago. When I caught her arm and kept her from falling? Even further back. When I first _saw_ Missandei, the new translator for Master Kraznys.

For I had never felt fear, not _anger_ , until I meet Missandei of the Island of Naath. This one—no, _I_ could have been a slave for life. I could have been defiled and beaten and worked until blisters wore through to my bones. I would have been able to bear it. 

But I could not bear it for Missandei, who is worth ten thousand of the masters she serves. Every day I saw the collar around her neck, I had to force myself from tearing it off.

Especially now, alone with her, in the little shed. But it was not time. Not yet.

“He says there are too many Unsullied. That the cost outweighs the price they can recover. They will have to make decisions,” she murmured, in darker tones than I had ever heard fall from her lips, whether speaking our master’s words or her own. 

She added grimly, “And they must make those decisions soon.”


	6. Chasing Starlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. So show!Barristan and me are still not on the best terms because of that whole not encouraging Daenerys to speak with Jorah alone and basically getting him fired (aka banished *insert a thousand cry emojis*) thing. Waaaaah. Still. Salty.
> 
> But book!Barristan and show!Barristan pre-all that nonsense – oh, I just want to hug him :) And that’s because 1) he’s a card carrying member of #OGTeamTargaryen *heart eyes* 2) spy!Barristan is such a mood (see salzrand’s fabulous illustration below for more details) and 3) Barristan chapter means I can get all up in my Ashara Dayne feels and drop in some casual book lore. Yay.
> 
> If you haven't read the books, I think that this chapter will still make sense. I've tried to work in all the necessary history. But if you’re wondering “who even is Ashara Dayne?”…feel free to skip to my end notes for some background. 
> 
> Also just wanted to mention that I'll probably have to skip updating next week because I’ll be out of town, but definitely back to the normal schedule the week after <3

**_Ser Barristan_ **

The day Joffrey Baratheon dismissed me from the Kingsguard, I considered leaving Westeros for good. I thought I might seek out the young Targaryen exiles across the Narrow Sea. It was said that Viserys had procured himself an army of Dothraki by selling his younger sister to the greatest Khal of the Essosi plains. He would need advisors if he were to mount an offensive and convince those savage horse lords to cross the salt sea.

But there were rumors that the coin tossed at Viserys’s birth had come down on the mad side, and that the young man had a desire for blood and violence that rivaled a butcher. That should have deterred me, as I knew something about both mad _and_ cruel kings. Of the last three monarchs I’d served, only Robert could be called sane. 

And I’ve suspected for some time that even he _smiled_ as the corpses of Rhaegar’s children, Rhaenys and Aegon Targaryen, were laid at his feet on bloody, crimson, Lannister robes.

Had I been in the throne room that day and seen Robert’s smile, I would have killed him. And then Ned Stark or Jon Arryn or one of the others would have killed me, and perhaps I’d have been spared the regrets that have plagued me since before the Sack and the Trident. Ever since that regrettable tourney in Harrenhal all those years ago.

I thought briefly that Viserys Targaryen, mad or not, might redeem me. For I sorely needed redemption. A lifetime’s worth. Like sackcloth and ashes to clothe myself in. 

I saddled my horse and I rode out of King’s Landing that day with every intention of finding the next harbor north and bartering discreet passage on a ship bound for Essos and the Free Cities. 

But something stopped me. 

When I took to the road, my anger had begun to cool. The thought of those hushed jeers in the throne room, Joffrey’s smug speech and that small grin Cersei Lannister vainly tried to hide behind her hand, didn’t burn quite as hot—and I found myself turning my mount to the Stormlands instead of the sea.

Turning home. A woman’s voice in my head said it outright.

_Go home, Ser Barristan. Just go home._

It was a reckless move. I had not left the capital on good terms with king. And no sooner had I entered Harvest Hall, than I fell to my knees before my nephew, Arstan, the lord of that place, and begged him to forgive whatever wrath might befall our family seat for my selfish desire to go home again. 

“Uncle, there’s nothing to forgive,” Arstan shook his head, waved me up immediately and embraced me warmly. My cousins too, my nieces and nephews, my brother’s widow, faces I hadn’t seen in too many years to count. They all embraced me, welcomed me and said that there was no better place for me all the world over. 

And Arstan vowed, “If His Grace wishes to send his grandfather’s lions to treat with us in the Stormlands, let him come. He’ll find he wasn’t well-liked even before he dismissed our favorite son from his side.”

Joffrey never came to the Stormlands. He choked on a glass of poisoned wine at his own wedding. He died in his mother’s arms, they say. I’d guarded that boy and his father for years. But I can’t say that I gave more than a small sigh at the raven’s news.

_The waste of it all. The waste of everything._

I couldn’t shake the feeling of deep regret. Too much had happened. Too much that I could trace back to my own failures. And so, while home was a sweet reprieve and my family was as warm and kind as I’d left them, I found myself too often staring out my bedroom window, into the night sky, playing back memories that I should have relinquished long ago.

But how could I? So long as the night sky was filled with _stars_ , how could I forget the one failure that hurt the most? That might have made all the difference?

_Ashara…_

During the false spring before Robert’s Rebellion, I lost the tournament at Harrenhal on the last lance. I had to unhorse Rhaegar to defeat him and I failed to do it. I glanced off his armor and he faltered but did not fall. I’d been unhorsing men for years and when it mattered most, I failed miserably. 

I remember feeling old that day, for the first time in my life.

Old and worn out. Isn’t that why I said nothing to Ashara Dayne as I danced with her the first night of the tournament? Not one word of my true feelings to that girl with black hair and dancing violet eyes. For what good would it do? I was sworn to the Kingsguard for life. And she preferred Ned Stark. I’d seen the looks they exchanged.

And yet, she danced with me. I felt her smaller hand curl around mine and felt her lay her head against my chest as the song slowed over melancholy notes at the end of the night. She sighed in my arms softly, but said nothing. Just as I said nothing. 

If I’d won that tournament, I’d have crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty. No one could have persuaded me against it, not even my own good sense.

And I would have laid white roses in her lap instead of those thorny blue ones that Rhaegar chose for Lyanna Stark.

It’s a sad, sad story. It’s the only one I have left, the others boiling away into vapor.

I wasn’t old then, though I felt it. And I wasn’t old when Joffrey sent me away. Not yet. But soon enough. One day, I realized that I _had_ grown old. It happened when I wasn’t watching and the man who looked back at me in the mirror was someone I didn’t recognize. Snow white hair where it once was brown. Crow’s feet that criss-crossed my weathered skin like lines on a map. I didn’t recognize the man who stared back at me, even though he had my eyes. Pale and blue and sad.

Eyes that I’ve turned towards the stars too often. 

Nearly a decade after I’d been home, Arstan told me, “You’ve been staring at those stars for as long as I’ve known you, Uncle. Perhaps you should go find the resting place of your fallen one?”

The nudge was gentle and the choice was mine to make. I could stay in Harvest Hall until the end. But there was a little life left in me yet. I was too old to go traipsing after ghosts but I did anyway. With Cersei’s death and Stannis’s coronation came a long peace. But, despite that peace, I remained strangely restless.

As restless as I’d ever been, even as the end of my days approached swiftly. Arstan’s words resonated in my ears. And I suddenly knew that, before I died, I needed to see where she died.

So I bid my cousins and all my nieces and nephews goodbye. All except Arthur, Arstan’s youngest son, a young man with dark hair, like a Dornishman, and a quiet manner, like any true Selmy. He’d been named after Ashara’s brother and perhaps he was curious to see the lands once trod by the man he was named after. 

Or perhaps his father bade him accompany me, to watch out for an old man who should be content to stay at home.

We travelled to Starfall, at the mouth of the frothy, rushing Torrentine and the western edge of the Summer Sea. And while Arthur explored the Dayne castle, I stood down on the rocky beach, watching the waves break against the stones that surrounded Palestone Sword. I looked up at the high window that Ashara herself must have looked down from many a time—as a child, watching ships come to berth. And later, as a woman caught on the wrong side of the Rebellion, waiting for news of those she loved.

This is the tower they say she jumped from. Dashed to the rocks, lost to the sea.

Starfall has been lordless since Robert took King’s Landing. Since Arthur was slain at the Tower of Joy. Since Ashara fell… 

Its halls are quiet and still, a castle haunted by tragedy.

The Daynes are gone. But _Dawn_ remains. The ancestral sword of House Dayne was forged in the heart of a dying star that fell from the heavens. It’s pale as milkglass but strong as Valryian steel. I saw it wielded by Arthur in battle, defending Rhaegar. I saw him cut down a dozen men at a time, that sword swinging like a stray bolt of starlight.

The sword is locked up in the tower, in a jeweled scabbard that Ashara must have chosen herself, after Ned Stark returned it to her hands. Four tower guards of House Dayne keep watch over it still, stubbornly, in service to their absent lord and in promise to their heartbroken lady, who asked that they keep it safe always. Before throwing herself off the tower, in the hours just before break of dawn…

“She didn’t jump, you know.”

These words. Spoken so casually, by a lad no more than ten or eleven as he crawled over the slick, black rocks in the surf, looking for oysters, damsel fish and shore crabs. I was sitting on one of those rocks, my boots in seawater and walking stick balanced on my aching knees. My gaze had been drawn skyward for hours, towards that tower and its highest window, lost in my own thoughts.

I’d been staring at that window for the better part of the morning. The child must have noticed.

“What did you say?” I asked him, doubting my ears. My hearing was not as good as it used to be. And age plays tricks on the senses. 

“I said she didn’t jump,” the boy answered, skipping over the rocks nimbly, bare-footed and sun-freckled. He was intent on his work, paying little attention to me except to give me those strange, unexpected words. “They all think she did. They sent ravens saying she jumped. But no one saw it and my father says they never found her body.”

“She would have been swept out to sea,” I explained to him, knowing that the young rarely accept the unshakeable laws of mortality.

“Maybe,” the boy shrugged, unconvinced. He held up a large, orange-colored crustacean for my inspection. It was nearly as big as his hand and he nodded his head towards its grasping pinchers. “But the sea brings everything back to shore. And Ashara Dayne never came back.”

The boy talked nonsense but had a simple confidence that was unnerving. I reminded myself again—Ashara had thrown herself off the highest tower of Palestone Sword. There was no story in the Seven Kingdoms more certain than that. Not in my head, at least. 

Which had been replaying it for fifteen years longer than that boy had been alive.

She killed herself. It was a sad, desperate thing. Whether from grief over her brother’s death or what happened after the dance at Harrenhal or something else entirely, I’ll never know. But she threw herself off the tower.

No one had ever questioned it.

_They never found her body…_

The boy moved up the craggy shoreline, away from me, retrieving his bucket from the shallow tide pools, and dumping his loot within. He brushed the crusty sand from his hands and leap-frogged a couple more rocks to the softer sands of the short beach, whistling a light-hearted melody, as his bucket was full and he’d be home before lunch. 

I remained down by the rocks for some time, waiting for Arthur, my eyes still on that window, a scrap of lavender fabric, from an old, ruined banner, fluttering in the sea breeze.

_My lady, why didn’t you send for me? For anyone…_

That dance at Harrenhal. There was no future in it, but I couldn’t deny myself the pleasure. My hand splayed on Ashara’s back, the smell of violets all around her. In her black hair, on the seafoam dress she wore, in those laughing eyes that met mine for a long moment as the song ended and we drew apart.

She turned those eyes on me. But she turned them on Ned Stark too. Who was younger and better suited for her. Unattached, at the time. And not a member of the Kingsguard, sworn to celibacy for life.

But then the Mad King burned Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark, and Ned was no longer unattached, nor fighting on the same side.

Ned brought Dawn back to Starfall with Arthur Dayne’s blood on his hands. And Ashara took her brother’s sword back with silent, terrible tears flooding her violet eyes. Ned told me that himself, years later, with shame and guilt lacing his words. 

_They never found her body…_

In my old age, I’d grown foolish. And that boy’s claims echoed in my head, disturbing my sleep, haunting my steps. Enough that when we left Starfall, I told Arthur that he should go home to Harvest Hall.

“And what about you, Uncle?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I answered, having an idea in my head to chase a fallen star. I’d made inquiries with that young boy’s father, who had served Old Lord Dayne before he died as a steward, and he told me some whispers that I couldn’t ignore. That beckoned me across the sea.

Arthur came with me, unwilling to let me go alone. We were chasing rumors and ghosts, half-remembered truths and secrets from years ago. Whispers, always whispers. Similar in tone to those whispers that said Daeneyrs Targaryen had survived the deaths of Viserys and her Khal and fled east with Jeor Mormont’s son.

And wasn’t that rumor proved true? 

The stories that came down from the Wall after the siege of Castle Black were made of stronger stuff than rumor. The songs of the Long Night were still echoing throughout Westeros. I might have seen the lost princess myself, as Stannis Baratheon had called us all north. We tried to answer, but Harvest Hall was tangling with Lannisters that year, as Cersei grasped wildly for power in a country that had turned against her.

And those songs and stories—well, they were no less believable than those stories that said Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, had found redemption on the Island of Tarth or that Sansa Stark had taken the Hound into her bed during the cold nights of the Long Winter, and whelped at least one pup by him already.

Who was I to judge any of it? Unspeakable odds—they were faced every day. Unsuitable matches—the world is full of them. Love—the most inconvenient truth to be found from Starfall to the Shadowlands beyond Asshai.

For what else drove me to the Free Cities, Slaver’s Bay and finally to Port Yhos, chasing rumors and ghosts? Chasing a hopeless love in my heart that refused to die.

I _needed_ to know. I’d never made peace with her death. Not ever. And that boy on the beach at Starfall made me doubt. Just enough.

I don’t think Arthur was convinced. But my nephew’s son never complained, never pushed me to abandon this journey and return to Harvest Hall. I was grateful to him for that, even if he was just indulging an old fool.

“I’ll take the south side of the market,” Arthur mentioned, lifting his heavy pack, and mine, up on his broad shoulder. We were both dressed in commoner’s clothes, little more than beggar’s rags, all muted shades of brown and grey. We were meant to mingle with the traders in the markets but the further east we went, the more outlandish and colorful the local costumes became. “You watch from here and see if he turns up before midday.”

I nodded and clapped my gnarled hand down on his free shoulder once in agreement, wishing us both luck. We were chasing yet another whisper. A whore in Volantis had led us to a seneschal in Yunkai who directed us to a day trader in Port Yhos, who the seneschal said sold tiger cubs from Yi Ti on the first day of every month. The tiger merchant would be bearded, the seneschal said, and wear gold rings in both ears.

_Ask him about a woman in a lacquered mask…_

I had no idea if the tiger merchant would have the information that I’d been seeking. He would likely be just another link in a long chain that led back to the same tower and the same sad ending. I almost longed for the end of that chain, for the finality of it, one way or another, so I could tell Arthur that we could return to Harvest Hall and I could die in peace.

But I had to see this through. I’d become child-like in my stubbornness. Perhaps all old men are the same. But I was acutely aware that my life was nearing its end and I had to know before I went…

The market bustled, as they all do. These eastern port cities were busy year round. And Port Yhos wasn’t so far off from the Jade Gates, so they had merchants and traders from both east and west converging on the markets daily.

It was a cool morning, at least by eastern standards. Soon, the sun would bake the clay of the serpentine streets, hot enough that an egg might sizzle on the stones. I stood by a brick wall, in shadows, hoping for the swift arrival of the tiger merchant, leaning on my staff with both hands, watching the crowds grow thicker as more booths were set up.

The mix of cultures and color in eastern cities never ceased to amaze me. Westeros was drab in comparison, its colors dull, its people blunt. Only Dorne compared, and even Starfall or Sunspear couldn’t manage to display the same exotic, delicate nature of even the smallest eastern market. Fabrics that shimmered in the most vibrant blues, greens, reds and purples, gauze and silk. Painted faces, Unsullied bronze, Dothraki skins, bangles, veils and silver bells. Speckled goats herded down the midway, blush and blue-colored fish in baskets loaded off the docks. It was a jostling dance of energy and movement. 

Two figures passed by me, approaching a nearby apothecary’s booth, inspecting the man’s glass bottles, powders and draughts. The girl’s hair caught my attention, in a way that I don’t think it would have caught anyone else. My eyes, having been peeled for a bearded man with gold earrings and tiger cubs, immediately fixated on the girl instead. 

Here, in the east, her hair was no marvelous thing. There was a woman two booths down who had vibrant, green streaks dyed into her dark hair, and tattoos of vines and ivy scrolling up and down her bare arms.

But I had served Targaryens for most of my life, and I knew that particular shade of silver-blonde when I saw it.

I blinked, astonished. Was this Daenerys Targaryen, the lost princess?

No, it couldn’t be. As she spoke with the apothecary, asking after dreamwine, I saw the face of a young woman, barely out of childhood. She wore a light-colored dress, fitted with legs for riding. And her long, silver braids looked a little windswept, with more than a few strands escaping their ties. Her eyes were not violet-colored but blue—I could tell that even standing a few yards away. I knew what violet eyes looked like. They’d been haunting my dreams for the last forty years.

But the girl’s features were too reminiscent of Rhaella and Aerys. Too much like Rhaegar.

And sure enough, as I observed them, I heard the girl say, “Shall we buy all of them, Papa?”

“Not at that price, lass,” answered the tall, strong man standing beside here, wearing a sword at his side. He was younger than me but not by more than a score of years, with generous grey in his hair and close-cut beard. He had the practiced stance and grim expression of a knight. He kept close to the girl, surveying the market with a careful gaze, alert for danger. 

When he turned towards me, I bent my head slightly, hiding beneath the hood of my beggar’s rags. He brought his gaze back to the herbalist slowly, reminding the man in an even timbre, “You’re not the only apothecary in Port Yhos today.”

I knew that man’s voice. I knew his face as well, or a younger version. We’d both fought in the Greyjoy Rebellion nearly a lifetime ago. And I knew his father, as both the Lord Commander of Castle Black and as Lord Mormont of Bear Island before that.

Rumors and ghosts—but these were neither. By my own eyes, I was looking at Ser Jorah Mormont and his Targaryen daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the simplified background: 
> 
> The Daynes are an ancient house from Dorne. Their family seat is Starfall, at the edge of the Summer Sea. Their sigil is a sword crossing a fallen star. We don't know their words. Yet. _Dawn_ is arguably one of the coolest swords in the whole book series. There’s a lot of mysticism surrounding House Dayne and I wouldn’t be surprised if they play a major role in the books by the end.
> 
> Ashara Dayne was Arthur Dayne’s younger sister and Elia Martell’s best friend. When Elia married Rhaegar Targaryen, Ashara went with her to the capital as her lady-in-waiting. There's not much mentioned about Ashara and Arthur's parents so I usually write them as having died before Robert's Rebellion. There's another sister, Allyria, in the books and a nephew, Edric, but for the purposes of this fic - I'm saying they either don't exist or died with the rest of Ashara's family. 
> 
> Ashara was beautiful, with black hair and violet eyes. There were quite a few men who were linked to her pre-Rebellion, including Ned Stark (Catelyn was originally betrothed to Ned’s brother, Brandon, so Ned was unattached prior to the whole Mad King kills his brother and father thing). There's also a rumor that Brandon Stark may have assaulted her (and that she may have given birth to a stillborn baby) but pretty much everything with Ashara is rumor.
> 
> The only thing we know for sure is that Ser Barristan loved her. Like, _loved_ her. Deeply and forever. His POVs in ADWD are filled with regret over Ashara and he blames himself for everything that happened after the tourney in Harrenhal. Which is probably naive (Rhaegar and Lyanna were the WORST and likely would have run off together no matter what) but also, super romantic *heart eyes*
> 
> Anyway, Ashara’s story ends in total tragedy. After her brother Arthur is slain at the Tower of Joy, Ned Stark takes _Dawn_ back to her at Starfall. The rumor is she jumps off the tower soon after in her grief.
> 
> Sure, she did. *heavy side eye at GRRM*


	7. Footsteps at Twilight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first of all - thank you _all_ so much for the response on the last chapter! I was not expecting that much love on Barry's part of this story but it made me so happy. I feel good about where that strand of the story is going so we'll return to our Barrashara feels a little later <3
> 
> I'm behind on replying to comments but will catch up. Promise. In the meantime, I didn't want to go a second week without an update (or without you seeing the latest salzrand arts because #ahjsajldkakfkldalskjakadkla she outdid herself again for this chapter *dial tone* *writer-girl can't come to the phone right now, because she's died and gone to fangirl heaven*).
> 
> As always, your love/comments/kudos on my fics continues to humble me! Best readers *blows kisses to all*

**_Jorah_ **

We were being followed. 

I’d risked a couple brief glances back towards Port Yhos and saw nothing in the dimming twilight. Just a narrow lane flanked by tangled, coastal forest and shallow salt marshes. The path we took was an old one, rarely used, wide enough for two travelers walking side by side but no more than that. 

We’d made the trip to Port Yhos four times now and never passed another living soul on the path from the harbor to the hidden bay, where Dark Sister was waiting. But I could hear a third set of footsteps every once in a while, the crunch of noise hushed up and careful, but hitting my ears just behind Jeorgianna’s soft voice. 

“…and he hasn’t tried anything, Papa, so I wish you’d give him a chance,” Jeorgianna was attempting to convince me of her young admirer’s true intentions. It was a conversation that came up often, as it was still unresolved.

Or unresolved to Jeorgianna’s liking, anyway. It was a losing battle but one that she’d been fighting for the better part of the last year. All my children were so stubborn. Stubborn like dragons, stubborn like bears. There was no escaping that family trait.

Jeorgianna continued, accusing me directly, “Mathias told me that you said I was on rounds with Bithia the other night when I was in the house with Mama the whole time…”

Mathias Serik—oh, I found myself frowning darkly on his name. Even while listening for those telltale sounds of footsteps behind us. The boy had his qualities, I’m sure. He was a fisherman’s son—I knew his mother and father well enough. And Mathias has been working at the docks since he was fourteen. I’ve never heard anyone complain about his work ethic or his fair-to-middling virtues so I’m sure he’ll make some girl a very steady husband someday.

Just not my daughter. At least not until she’s forty.

“Papa, are you listening to me?” she asked, after a pause that extended too long. I was distracted, trying to listen to those masked footsteps. But I didn’t want to spook whoever was following our path. Nor frighten Jeorgianna.

“Hmm?” I muttered, before recovering. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sure he’s a good lad, Jeorgianna. But I was a seventeen-year-old boy once upon a time too. And trust me, that boy has one thing on his mind.”

She shook her silver-blonde head, with a not-so-patient sigh. 

“You’re not being fair,” she answered, glumly. She looked so much like her mother when she was disappointed with me. It was uncanny, but expected. Daenerys never liked to be told what to do either.

“If he wants to visit the house, he can. Our door is always open to anyone,” I argued, giving her the same old compromise I’d offered many times before. “I just don’t see why he needs to sneak his way in through the back gate or over your mother’s garden hedges so often…”

“Because he’s afraid of you!” Jeorgianna insisted, throwing up her hands in exasperation. She counted out a list on her fingers, “And Grandfather, who puts him to work every time he catches him, and has him hauling weeds or sweeping out his workshop until the sun goes down. And Mama too, honestly. She’s not as blatant about it as you and Grandfather but she says he’s too proud of his own looks and that he’s too fond of hearing his own voice when he sings me songs or recites poems to give me a chance to get a word in edgewise.”

“Well…”

“I know all that,” Jeorgianna replied, sharply. “I’m not stupid. And I don’t even like him that way. Not really. Or maybe I do? You won’t give me a chance to find out.”

“You’re too young, lass,” I reminded her. 

“Too young for a boy to sing me songs?” she tipped her head, cleverly, blue eyes sparking on an infallible argument. “But not too young to fly around on the back of a full grown dragon?” 

She raised her eyebrows at me, in a cheeky gesture learned from her mother. Her words were no empty thing, and I was the only father in the world they might just work on. 

The first time Jeorgianna took me up in the air on Dark Sister, I wondered where my children had found the courage to do it. I’d been on horses since I was a boy and tussled with the blackest, stormiest seas many times. But a dragon was not a horse and the sky was not the sea. The height was dizzying, as Dark Sister’s black wings beat harder and pumped faster, lifting us quickly into thinner air, up, up, up—until we nearly grazed the underside of white clouds.

The images below became distant—the surf breaking along the beach, the high cliffs, Daenerys shielding her eyes against the white-and-apricot sunlight as she watched us climb heavenward. The whole, long coastline became visible as we crested the plateau of those cliffs and Jeorgianna pointed out landmarks to me as we took to the open air.

“There’s the villa. You see the red door?” she pointed down the coast with one hand, while keeping the other on Dark Sister’s scales, likely for my benefit. 

My children had no fear of falling. They communicated with their dragons almost telepathically, anticipating every dip of the dragon’s wing and every lift of the dragon’s tail. Aemon once told us that Daenielle had fallen asleep on Seadancer’s back while in flight—before Jeorgianna had a chance to tell her brother to hush. 

The landscape became a tapestry the higher one flew, with green fields and vineyards alternating with blue lakes, rushing rivers and rocky, barren places. I picked out the dusty border of the endless Red Waste, which was more than a day’s ride away by horse. The massive Bone Mountains of Yi Ti loomed in the East, snow-capped and savage-looking, dark shadows and storm clouds playing at those high peaks. To the south, the Jade Sea stretched out before us like a glass mirror, sunlight glittering off its blue-green waters.

I knew Daenerys was grinning below as she watched us fly. The children had taken her up before me. It was only right and she took to it like…a dragon to the sky. Her face was flushed with exhilaration and joy when she came back down again. My wife was the blood of Old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. She was born to ride on these beasts. In another life, they might have been hers to command instead of our children’s.

“With three dragons you could have taken your father’s throne back easily,” I mused to her once I’d rejoined her on the beach, and we stood barefoot in the surf, watching all three dragons as tiny specks above, diving and twirling in the air, showing off for their newest riders. I murmured the words softly, nearly hesitant to give them voice. I could guess how she felt about the idea but was still unwilling to presume her thoughts, even after all these years. 

But she shook her head, leaning back against my chest while guiding my arms around her waist, where they belonged. She answered, “I don’t think anything is easy if you fight against your own fate.”

“The Iron Throne was your fate,” I reminded her. “I stole you away from it.”

“No, _you_ were my fate. From the first,” Daenerys argued. Her conviction on that score had only grown stronger as the years went by. The red priestess who once claimed otherwise was long dead, with all her false prophecies and flames extinguished. 

Daenerys turned in my arms, stretching up to kiss my cheek, “And you can’t steal what already belongs to you, Jorah.”

My heart warmed on her words, as always, and I bent towards her, nuzzling at the exposed skin of her throat, to drag a line of gentle kisses up to her earlobe. The thought that any of this life belonged to me—Daenerys, the children, my father, the sea, the sky and the dragons darting between them—I would never believe any of it. But I’d accept its gifts with as much grace and humility as I could muster.

And protect it, until my last breath.

With Jeorgianna’s last words, she heard it too. That third, distinct set of footsteps, trailing our own. And I saw her eyes glint with dawning clarity and a sudden explanation for my gruff distraction since we left the markets in Port Yhos. We shared a weighty look, a simple plan hatching between us. With an imperceptible nod of her head, she gave a small sigh of put upon resignation. She continued, making sure to keep her voice as light and argumentative as before, so our pursuer didn’t suspect anything on our parts.

“Well, if you don’t let me see Mathias…,” she began, using the free opportunity to strike her father where it might hurt the most. She shrugged, “I suppose I could always write Robin Arryn back.” 

I groaned, “Don’t even joke about that, Jeorgianna.”

A few years back, we’d received a letter from the Vale. It was written in the scribble of a young boy-lord who was too used to getting his own way. It was ill-composed, addressed to “Ser Jorah Mormont and Wife” and likely had some of Littlefinger’s influence in it, although too clumsily done. 

But it read: _The lauded Lord of the Vale would be willing to take your daughter off your hands, once she comes of age, with an expected bride-price to be negotiated._

He didn’t specify which of my daughters. Nor their names, as I doubt Robin Arryn or Petyr Baelish would have taken the time to learn them. Lord Arryn would never receive a reply to his letter. It had become a joke in our household. But a blunt reminder to me, as well—Jeorgianna had grown up into a young woman as beautiful as her mother. Daenielle would follow soon enough.

With the same ancient and royal bloodline flowing through their veins.

Daenerys may have set aside any claims to the West. And Stannis Baratheon was now king of that country. But there are those who never quit scheming. Not ever. And I was never happy when those schemes attempted to drag my family into their sticky, self-destructive webs. 

“Why not?” Jeorgianna played innocent. “You don’t think Lord Arryn would get along with Dark Sister?”

“Maybe not,” I allowed, giving her a little huff of laughter, despite myself. 

With a stranger in the shadows, I was in no mood for any levity. But the idea of Jeorgianna arriving in the Vale on her black dragon, like the second coming of Visenya Targaryen, _was_ amusing. If the stories about young Robin Arryn were true, I don’t think that nervous, spoiled boy would handle the discovery of a _dragon_ perched on his bedroom window very well. I had a sudden notion of him backing up quickly and tumbling through his own moon door, once he realized exactly who he’d requested as a bride.

The path from Port Yhos to the hidden bay curved ahead, as it veered sharply through a small grove of fig trees and brush. I gave Jeorgianna a muted signal, but one she read well. As we turned the corner, she continued on as I dropped back against the thick, grey trunk of a nearby tree. She continued speaking about nonsense as if I were still walking beside her.

“You have to admit that Lady Jeorgianna of the Vale does have a nice, _elegant_ ring to it…”

It took less than a minute for the hooded figure who had been following us to round that corner. And less than two seconds for my sword to be leveled against the stranger’s throat.


	8. A Girl and Her Dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jeorgianna Mormont, ladies and gentlemen. Blood of Old Valyria and the First Men. Firstborn of Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen. Child of the Jade Sea, survivor of the Long Night and Dragonrider of Dark Sister <3

_**Jeorgianna** _ ****

“I yield, I yield!” the young man in Papa’s grasp instinctively tried to escape, scrambling away as soon as he was caught. 

But my father had surprised him at the bend in the road and now held him fast. After only a brief struggle, the man stopped his vain efforts, unable to break free with my father’s powerful forearm locked and crushing against his windpipe. The man threw up both his hands from the folds of his cloak to show he was unarmed and had no intention of fighting my father. He croaked out breathlessly, promising again, “I _yield_.”

Papa released him. He took the man’s elbow roughly and threw him backwards on the path a few steps towards Port Yhos, while simultaneously positioning himself between me and the stranger. Papa’s sword arm remained braced and ready, ever willing to cut the man down if he tried to attack or retreat to the harbor under ill designs.

“Who are you?” Papa demanded, in a commanding, grave-dark voice he reserved for imps and eunuchs or tense days spent on the other side of the sea.

My father rarely used that voice, and not once in the last ten years. The sharp memory of it, the familiar, terse tones, sparked a recognition of danger in my head and my heart started to beat a little faster, at least while all the unknowns continued swirling in the air between us.

 _Who is this man? What does he want? Why is he following us?_ My own expression went as stern as Papa’s.

But the young man held up his forefinger, begging my father’s leave as he coughed a few times, catching his stolen breath. His other hand briefly went to his throat to assess the damage caused by my father’s strong grip. It might bruise a little, but he’d certainly survive.

We watched him suspiciously, waiting for him to explain himself.

The young man had dark hair, black as a raven’s wing in twilight, with a shadow of a beard growing along his jaw. I would guess that he kept his chin clean-shaven when he was at home, wherever that was. He was dressed in traveler’s clothes, well-worn and caked with dust from the road, like a beggar or a peasant. But the way he carried himself, straightening up and nodding his head towards my father in a brief but telling show of respect, his accent…

The stranger was from Westeros.

“My apologies,” the man’s gaze darted between my father and me, giving the apology to both of us. The apology seemed sincere, with his cultured voice giving off an honest note. He kept his hands raised, hiding nothing. He must have known how he looked to us, a pursuer in the shadows, but he attempted to rectify the impression quickly.

I was struck by his eyes, for they met mine at least three times in those first few minutes. I couldn’t read his thoughts and wouldn’t try. And I’d had men looking at me for a while now, in a way they never had when I was a child. I wasn’t used to it yet. 

But there was none of that sort of thing in this young man’s gaze. Just a natural, unexpected _warmth_ that must be very ingrained indeed, to be visible to strangers. He regretted how this meeting started and wanted to make sure I wasn’t afraid.

 _I’m no threat to you, Jeorgianna. I swear it._ His eyes said those words so plainly.

And I’m not sure how I knew that after hearing him speak all of four words but I found myself relaxing all the same, the fearful, clutched-heart feeling of only a few moments before leaving my chest immediately, evaporating away into nothingness. Leaving behind only curiosity.

“Your name?” my father was less convinced and more careful, raising his sword just a hair higher.

“Arthur Selmy of Harvest Hall. Lord Arstan’s youngest son,” the young man gave his name freely, though it meant little to me. Or even my father. Perhaps knowing this, he added, “I’m Ser Barristan Selmy’s nephew.”

 _That_ name registered in Papa’s ears and his sword arm hesitated, the blade dipping down slowly until it was nearly perpendicular with the path.

“Barristan Selmy?” Papa repeated, dumbly, his voice betraying that the name given was perhaps the last he would have expected to hear falling from the lips of the young man before him. He could hardly believe it, repeating himself, “Ser Barristan the Bold?”

“Yes,” the young man confirmed. “The same. My uncle saw you and your daughter—” He gave me a slightly longer look, features soft, before he returned his gaze to my father, “—in the harbor market earlier today. He bid me follow you, as he had not thought to see Jorah Mormont in our travels.”

“What are you and your uncle doing in the East?” my father’s voice remained stern, but he had sheathed his sword. His stance became less aggressive. 

Barristan Selmy was one of the most honorable men on both continents. He was a lauded knight and known the world over by reputation alone. I’d heard Papa and Grandfather speak his name with measures of respect and admiration that was uncommon for either of them. My father and grandfather both had impossible standards.

As Mathias knew well enough.

“That story would take some time to tell, Ser,” Arthur Selmy admitted, without guile. He wasn’t being difficult. He was being honest. 

Again, I wondered how I knew that. Maybe Mama was right. Perhaps I was too willing to trust the good intentions of others. Perhaps I was a girl too easily swayed by a sweet word or a pair of kind, warm eyes. I hated to think I might be too gullible. Still, I didn’t like to assume the worst and…

There was a sudden rush of air in the darkening sky above us. 

The evening light gave up little secrets. But the rush of air was followed by a _whooshing_ , leathery sound that I knew too well. It was the beat of a dragon’s wings. 

A _very_ large dragon.

“Oh, no,” I muttered, realizing that my initial feelings of fear—they had been brief, but they were there—likely called out to Dark Sister, where she’d been dozing or fishing in her secluded bay, waiting for our return. And sensing my fears, she came to me.

It’s the strangest thing. The dragons delight in our happiness. They snarl and claw with anger at our fear and pain. And they come to our aid swiftly when they sense a need for their presence. 

I don’t know how it works. None of us do. Aemon and I have searched through every book and scroll and scrap of parchment that we’ve found on dragons and we still don’t know how to explain it. But it’s been this way since the beginning. 

The same year the dragons hatched, Aemon broke his wrist. He’s always been too energetic. And that year, he’d made a game out of climbing one of the lemon trees in Mama’s gardens. He’d place his stuffed bear at the bottom of the trunk to watch. And then he’d climb, letting himself hang from the lower branches before falling into a giant pile of dead, dried leaves below. But one day, his landing wasn’t soft enough and we heard his cries from inside the house. 

I told my brother not to climb Mama’s lemon trees. I told him a thousand times.

Big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. Mama dried them all with her fingers. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be all right, little bear. I’m here,” she told him, in soothing tones that calmed him down. Mama’s voice could make anything better.

Bithia was called to the house, and Mama held Aemon in her lap as the healer set my brother’s wrist and affixed the splint. He sniffed through his lingering tears, miserable and sad, but safe in Mama’s arms. He kept his old, stuffed bear hugged to his chest with his uninjured arm the whole time. Mama pressed encouraging kisses against my brother’s ginger hair and told him to close his eyes and hold tight to her if he was scared. And I knelt on a throw rug nearby, watching, fascinated by the healer’s swift work and her skills in making broken things better.

That is, until Mama caught my eye and gave a discreet but sharp glance at the window just behind me. I turned and found Bearfyre perched on the window ledge, skittering about like a little, gold-scaled bird. His wingspan was not much wider than an osprey’s back then. But he stretched his wings wide, as he’d flown a great distance from the cove, at least for a small dragon. And no doubt, he felt pleased with his own efforts. 

He wanted to get to my brother. To help him, if he could. The window was cracked open, as it was a mild, pleasant day. But the space between the glass and the sill wasn’t large enough for Bearfyre to squeeze through. His clawed foot reached out to tap at the glass, asking us to let him in. My eyes widened and I jumped up from where I knelt by Bithia in a rush. 

As Mama made sure the healer’s attention remained on Aemon, I ran outside and retrieved the wayward dragon from obvious sight. 

“And how do you think you’ll fix a broken bone, you silly creature? You don’t have any thumbs,” I scolded Bearfyre, shifting him in my arms, careful of his ever-sharper talons, as I walked him down to Grandfather’s half-finished workshop. He could stay down there until Bithia finished her work and then we’d take him back down to the cliffs.

My brother’s dragon was too much like him. All action, little thought to the consequences.

But that day, we realized the depth of Bearfyre’s loyalty and connection to Aemon. The same as Seadancer’s connection to Daenielle. And Dark Sister’s to me…

Branches and twigs snapped and the ground shook as Dark Sister landed on the path behind me, the force of her landing blowing the loose strands of my silver hair around my face. Her claws dug into the forest path, ripping up saplings and salty weeds as she took a deliberate step forward, a growl in the back of her fiery throat, her dark, vertical-slit eyes firmly set on Arthur Selmy. 

She crouched, her muscles tensed, like a cat sizing up a mouse in the long grass.

Arthur’s expression changed quickly and severely at the sight of Dark Sister. He seemed brave enough when facing my father’s wrath, but confusion, wonder and apprehension suddenly mixed together on his face in a way that I’d never seen before.

It was to be expected, I suppose—he was the first person outside of our family to see a dragon in the flesh. And so close, he could nearly feel her hot breath on his skin.

Arthur Selmy’s eyes went wide and remained fixed on the dragon, unable to look away, even if his demise was imminent. I spun immediately, turning on my heel, to head off my dragon’s natural instincts.

“No, no! It’s all right,” I told her, keeping my voice steady and using the same soothing tones I’d learned from my mother. My hands were raised, beckoning her down closer, where I could stroke her face and snout, as I knew she liked. “It’s okay. Nothing’s wrong. It’s all right. He’s a friend…”

At the time, I had no idea if those words would prove themselves true. But I said them anyway, unwilling to have my dragon snap her jaws or release her fire on someone who didn’t deserve it. And I had a strong feeling that Arthur Selmy didn’t deserve to be bathed in dragon fire. 

“Is that…?” Arthur could manage little more than that.

“Aye,” my father could hardly suppress the grin of amusement that was hinting at the corners of his mouth. Somehow, I think he was projecting Mathias Serik onto Arthur Selmy in that moment for Papa seemed more than satisfied with the young man’s response to Dark Sister. I sincerely hoped it didn’t give him ideas on how to run off Mathias for good. 

Papa answered Arthur’s unfinished question, “It is. And perhaps you’ll be more careful about who you follow from now on?”

Arthur was speechless. He couldn’t stop staring at Dark Sister. He was terrified, sure. But he was fascinated too. And those two emotions were competing for space in his expression, taking equal turns, while I made sure my dragon played nice.

“Shhhh, you’re a good girl,” I scratched at her chin, at the more tender spots between scales that all the dragons leaned into. She tilted her massive head and pressed against me, firmly but light enough so she wouldn’t knock me down. “Yes, you are…”

“Come,” my father said to Arthur Selmy in the meantime. With the dragon beside us, it was easier to trust a stranger not to try anything stupid. 

And Arthur didn’t seem the marauding or thieving type, in any case. His eyes were too honest. Even my father must have noticed, for he continued, “You can share our dinner before we leave and tell us why your uncle ventures so far east.”


	9. What Storms May Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, nurse!Dany is a concept I'll never be over <3
> 
> Especially if salzrand intends to _slay_ me with illustrations like this in response *intense fangirl squealing/sobbing* THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH THOUGH <3333
> 
> Also p.s. I may be a little late with next week's update. Not sure yet. Just know if there's a delay it's all because of a super-secret, multi-chapter, Jorleesi-flavored project that will be hitting your inboxes in the very near future ;)

**_Daenerys_ **

The kettle sang in a high-pitched whistle, with white steam pouring from its spout. The whistling continued, pitch climbing, until I’d dried my hands and moved to the kitchen hearth to take the kettle away from the flames.

I used a thick cloth to grab its piping hot handle even though I didn’t need one. My skin would barely feel an open flame or glowing ember, even if I were to dig my hands into the ash bed. But it was old habit. When the children were still young, I worried they’d see me reach into the fire with my bare hands and then do the same, thinking it was safe. 

None of them had inherited that strangeness in my blood. Which I was glad of, in a way. There was recklessness in being able to run your hands through flame without feeling anything or step into a raging inferno and survive, with nothing more than ash in your hair. And my children were all too willing to take risks as it was for my liking.

Like Aemon going to Port Yhos with Jeorgianna this trip instead of Jorah. 

I shook my head at that thought, thinking again of all the things that might go wrong. Wondering how they’d tricked me into agreeing. Mulling over all the excuses I should have put forward when they pitched the idea in the first place. I’d been fretting all morning, as they’d left early, before sunrise, and vague and nagging feelings of unrest had been plaguing me since I kissed them both goodbye.

I kept pushing those thoughts away, distracted by other matters, the echo of Jeorgianna and Aemon’s confident words almost enough to convince me.

_We’ll be fine, Mama. We’ll be back tomorrow._

“Daenielle?” I called into the front room, as I poured the hot water from the kettle into a waiting mug. I’d laid a silver ball within, filled with crushed tea leaves, jasmine and eucalyptus. The fresh scents were strong and soothing, as more steam rose from that cup, curling off its lipped edges.

The tea was for Jorah, who was currently suffering his way through a terrible cold. He’d spent the last day feverish and coughing, his lungs congested. He seemed a little better today, but still tired and miserable. He was always miserable when he was ill, having no patience to stay in bed and let the fever run its course, delaying his recovery by stubbornly insisting he was fine.

Which is why I forbade him from leaving his chair in the front room until I said otherwise. And why I used Daenielle as a sentry to make sure he listened. Daenielle didn’t mind, as she liked playing nursemaid and she likely felt somewhat guilty, having been the first in the family to come down with this illness.

The last time I checked on them, Daenielle was perched on her father’s lap and reading to him in a soft voice, a folk story about a lucky minstrel from Braavos who traded three pebbles for a copper coin, a coin for a pigeon, a pigeon for a peach stand, and so on and so forth, until he ended up with a palace in Volantis.

Daenielle didn’t answer my summons. But perhaps she’d wandered down to Jeor’s workshop?

“Daenielle, did you hear me?” I asked again, just to make sure she wasn’t nearby. 

As the tea steeped, I walked a few steps to the archway leading from the kitchen to the outer rooms. And as I came into view of my husband and youngest daughter, Daenielle cast me a severe look, pressing her finger to her lips intently.

She was still on her father’s lap, with the book she’d been reading to him resting on her knees. His arms were held very loosely around her little waist but Jorah’s head had tilted down just slightly, his chin nearly dropping to his chest. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. 

The bear was sleeping. Perhaps not the most comfortably, but he was sleeping.

I was pleased, coming forward to help Daenielle extricate herself from her father’s unconscious grasp. I took the book from her outstretched hands and set it aside. Together, we lifted Jorah’s arms slowly and with care, so that she could slip off his lap without waking him. Once she was free, I reached for the nearest woven blanket and tucked it over his knees, happy to see his head shift just a little in sleep, his temple landing on the softer cushions of the chair’s head rest.

I shepherded Daenielle back to the kitchen, where we spoke in hushed tones.

“What do you want for supper tonight?” I asked her. It would likely be just the two us and Jeor partaking, so I gave her the choice. She considered, pursing her lips for a moment in thought.

“Rice pudding?” she asked, hopefully.

“You’re the only nine-year-old girl in the entire world who would ask for rice pudding. Do you know that?” I teased her lightly, knowing it wouldn’t change her mind. She just shrugged, confident in her own tastes.

She added, her blue eyes sparkling in anticipation, “And can you make mine with extra raisins and cinnamon?”

“Of course I can,” I answered her, pulling her in for a quick hug before shooing her off. “Go find Grandfather and tell him we’ll eat a little early tonight, since it’s just the three of us.”

“Okay, Mama.”

I watched Daenielle skip through the breezeway, catching a glimpse of the southern sky in the process. It was still only midday but there were black clouds brewing over the sea. And the wind coming off the water was a little stronger than I liked, blowing at the ribbon in Daenielle’s red-blonde hair, trying to pull it loose. We might be in for a storm later. 

My thoughts drifted to Aemon and Jeorgianna once more. 

_We’ll be fine, Mama…_

I suppressed the glower that was threatening to steal over my features and the second-guessing that was intent on running through my head, a constant, unhelpful barrage of: _You shouldn’t have let them go, Daenerys…_

I decided to take the tea to Jorah anyway, removing the tea leaves from the steaming cup by that ball’s silver chain. The fumes alone might be good for him. 

I set the hot tea on the stand at his right side and then took a seat in the spindly, straight-backed chair on his left, scooching the chair forward and leaning closer, letting the back of my hand gently rest at his forehead for a long moment. 

He was still fairly warm, but Jorah was always warm. 

_A true bear, born to survive snow squalls, blizzards and long winters_ , I mused affectionately, as my fingers trailed away from his forehead. On cold nights, I would curl closer to him, settling back against his chest and wrapping his arms around me like a fur pelt, taking advantage of the heat his body always seemed to radiate. He was the sun and I was the cold-blooded dragon-girl, seeking out his rays of light.

I could hear a slight rattle in his chest each time he inhaled but it was better than yesterday. And his color was better too. I was satisfied that he was on the mend, but stayed where I was for a while, content to watch him sleep.

Oh, he was a handsome man yet. Even with all that grey, which I found I liked nearly as much as the ginger locks. My lips turned into a slight smile and my hand slipped beneath his nearest one, resting quietly in his lap. Whether from instinct or habit, his fingers curled around mine, even in sleep. My smile widened at the familiar feel of his large fingers interlacing with mine.

After Jorah and Jeorgianna came back from that last trip, he told me everything that had happened with the Selmy boy and how Ser Barristan, my father’s former kingsguard, had found himself travelling in the east.

_Chasing stars…_ his nephew told Jorah, in a slightly rueful tone.

They’d missed the tiger merchant they were seeking and would have to wait another month to continue their quest, seeking out old clues that might lead to nothing. Nevertheless, Arthur Selmy told Jorah that he and his uncle would abide in Port Yhos until the new moon. This was something his uncle had to see through until the end. The young man was forthcoming about his uncle’s plans and he parted on thoroughly amicable terms with my husband.

Arthur Selmy had seen Dark Sister, but neither Jorah nor Jeorgianna seemed to think he’d share that information with anyone else. Perhaps not even his uncle. I would guess that facing down a dragon with its teeth bared would be enough to make him think twice. And the Selmy name was a trustworthy one, in any case.

I hoped that after Ser Barristan tracked down the final resting place of his star, he might visit us on the Jade Sea. I have no memories of my mother or father. None of Rhaegar either. And perhaps that was for the best. But I wondered if the old man might be willing to share some of his anyway. I suspected he might, as his journey to this side of the world was more than a little romantic. 

“Would you chase me so far?” I asked Jorah, after he’d told me the story. 

“I’d chase you through a dozen continents,” he promised, without a second thought. “You’d tire of me returning to your side.” 

“Never,” I answered, smirking at the absurd notion, hardly able to imagine a life where we were separated. There was no bedrock in it, no substance. Such a life would be a phantom thing, full of nonsense.

For I’d never tire of him. How could I? His voice, his smile, his laugh, the way his hands ran over the curves of my body, the way his kisses were pressed against my hair and the side of my grinning mouth. He was part of me and I was part of him, two halves of the same soul. 

They say love can be like a fine vintage of wine, aging into something far more glorious than its first taste. I still remembered that first taste well—my glance flickered to the balcony where I’d first kissed him so many years ago—but I found _this_ taste was longer, deeper and steadfast.

He woke after a little while, his fingers stretching over mine, gripping reality, leaving dreams behind. He took a deeper breath, swallowing once before his eyes opened, finding mine. I gave him a sympathetic half-smile, leaning forward to lay my hand against his forehead once again, then bringing that hand down to cradle his cheek for a moment with gentle caresses.

“I think your fever’s gone, at least,” I murmured, then asked, “How do you feel?”

“Like hell,” he replied, with a bear’s sullen growl. 

“I’d kiss you better, Ser, but I don’t want to catch your plague,” I winked at him and was rewarded with a small smirk for my trouble. I reached over him, adjusting the blanket before reaching for the tea. I delivered that cup into his hands, commanding, “Drink this.”

“It’s a little cooler than I like,” he mentioned cleverly, between sips. Well, if he could be clever, he was _certainly_ on the mend.

“I thought it better to let you sleep,” I replied, taking the hand that didn’t hold his tea cup in both of mine, tracing the lines of his palm absently.

“Aye,” he didn’t argue with me this time.

I sat with him while he drank that tea, and then a little longer. We spoke of little things, the children, the gardens, the harbor, until I gently coaxed him to close his eyes once more. He was more pliable today and, to my surprise, the coaxing worked. 

When I was satisfied that his breathing had evened out once more, I risked a brief kiss against the knuckles of his hand before rising, retrieving his empty cup before I walked back to the kitchen. 

Jeor and Daenielle came back to the house soon after, with that strong breeze following them in, rattling at the glass windows. The day had been very still that morning, with the sea as calm as glass. But I suddenly realized that the southern sky had gone a few shades darker while I was sitting in the front room with Jorah. And the sea was now tossing and turning restlessly.

Daenielle didn’t appear to notice or care about the dramatic change in weather, bouncing around the kitchen, collecting bowls for the three of us and an armful of spices for her rice pudding. But Jeor remained standing near the breezeway, eyes drawn back out those seaside windows, before finally turning to me.

“I don’t like the look of those clouds, lass,” Jeor mentioned, grimly, never one to play pretend. A storm was coming. A strong one. 

And two of my children were far from home. 

Jeor shook his white head, as he turned back, watching the storm come inland. He muttered, “I don’t like them at all.”


	10. Mask and Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think a couple of you already guessed the connection revealed in this chapter - well done, m'dears ;)
> 
> And honestly, side note - but I couldn't believe that they never brought Quaithe back after S2. I loved that Sam healed Jorah of greyscale but buuuuuuut they had a perfect opportunity to tie the Quaithe/Jorah side-story in a nice, symmetrical (S2/S7) bow and just...guess they _kinda forgot_ about the mysterious woman across the sea who knew something about sailing through Old Valyria. Shame, boys. Shame.
> 
> Well, I didn't forget ;) 
> 
> Also _dying_ at the delicacy of salzrand's drawing this week. In the _best_ way possible. So. Gorgeous <3

**_Quaithe_ **

_Our glass candles are burning bright_ …I heard a slippery, silver-tongued voice humming in the shadowlands.

“Why? What are you looking for?” I muttered a reply under my breath, although no one had spoken and I wasn’t currently interested in the hushed schemes of blue-lipped warlocks. They came my way anyway, as my ears were well-trained to hear the smug musings of that particular voice.

Too fond of his own talents, Pyat Pree’s thoughts were always so loud, as if he wanted me to know what he was up to. I could hear him halfway across the city, even though the black-barked groves and stone ruins of the House of the Undying were miles from my line of sight.

I was at home, standing beneath the gleaming bronze arch of my upper courtyard, arms crossed over my samite and silk robes and dark eyes alert behind my lacquered mask. 

My courtyard was built high in the city of Qarth, amongst lush gardens and groves of olive trees, with marble pillars inlaid with sapphires and silver and a long set of limestone steps leading up from the busy streets below. From up here, I could face south and east by turns, towards both the sea and the red wastelands beyond the Garden of Bones. 

Both directions held my interest, as I watched storms approach from either side. 

The weather vane on the dais behind me was spinning wildly. The fruit trees, hydrangea bushes and leafy hedges all shivered under severe winds that became increasingly stronger as the minutes ticked by.

Half an hour before, I’d sent the merchant sailor I’d been tending to home and told him we’d continue another time. The intricate spells of protection that I’d been painting along his back muscles and up his spine all morning were only half-finished. The ink would dry before the spell had time to set, draining its power within a day. It wouldn’t last. The marks would need to be redone from the beginning, but there was no helping it. 

I was not afraid of a passing rain shower but this was something else, a hurricane blown up from the South and a set of thunderstorms from the far East, perhaps not wholly natural, as nothing from beyond Asshai could be considered wholly natural. 

From the whispers on the wind and the look of that sky, the storms were set to collide with each other, and likely over this very city. 

The sky was a deep plum violet over the turbulent, churning waters of the sea and bled black and red from the eastern horizon, with only ragged strips of an eerie blue left in the dwindling space between them. 

“Your candles will be blown out in this wind,” I mused to no one, but I was satisfied that it was true, nonetheless. 

I didn’t like when Pyat Pree and his gaggle of puppet warlocks stirred in the House of the Undying, making mischief, always seeking out unfettered powers that would bring only more darkness to the world.

They had tricks and spells enough. Their greedy appetites deserved no more.

The young acolyte who came into my courtyard to clean out the paint jars every afternoon gave me a quick, sideways glance from where she knelt by marble pillars, collecting the empty jars and stained rags, thinking I’d asked her to perform another task.

“What did you say, my lady?” she asked, rising and bowing _so_ quickly. 

She was afraid of me. They were all afraid of me. Even His Grace, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, the King of Qarth, was afraid of me.

The day Xaro took the city, cutting open the throats of the remaining Thirteen at a chamber meeting, he sent men to my house too. They arrived fully armed and with explicit orders. To procure an oath of fealty from my lips or slaughter me where I stood. They came in by the front gate, as I never locked it. They marched up the limestone steps to my upper courtyard unimpeded, as I’ve never kept household guards.

What did I need with guards? A shadowbinder who cannot protect herself is no shadowbinder at all. It’s common knowledge.

And yet, I’ve bound no shadows in over thirty years. 

And when I did…well, it was only that once, in the black temple of Amar Ki, my bare feet touching smooth, obsidian floors slick with grease and my hands bathed in scarlet blood, with glass candles burning at all four corners of the sanctum and an eclipse that lasted a day and a night.

I remember putting my hands over my ears and screaming as I watched those ragged shadows eat my captor from the inside out.

Oh, but I was younger then and nearly out of my mind with grief. It was the desperate act of a woman marked for death. A girl unwilling to die because a red witch thought that eating the heart of a star might grant her immortal life. 

No, I’m afraid I couldn’t go out that way. Not even with my will to live battered and bruised to the point of giving up completely.

But that was nearly forty years ago. I hadn’t played at dark magic since I escaped Asshai. Why use dark magic when the standard fare will suffice?

When Xaro’s soldiers came to my house, they turned over tables, trampled the starflowers in the gardens and ransacked my courtyard, spilling paint and breaking jade tiles. But when I came down from my house to meet them, I signed their oath with no argument, handing the quill and scroll back to the captain with an easy manner. 

I’ve dealt in lies for years. What was one more added to the rest? My false name was signed beneath the oath of fealty, a further note to Xaro Xhoan Daxos scribbled beneath, divulging to him the exact day and hour in which he would die. 

They say his dark skin paled like milkglass when he read the words I’d added to that scroll. 

He can’t shake the knowledge now, he can’t forget. And Xaro rarely goes outside these days, confined to his palace by his own terrible fears, balling his fists, looking over his shoulder, pacing as his hour grows ever closer.

It’s a cruel thing, to tell someone how they will die. But his men had trampled my starflowers into the dirt and I’ve never been able to let injury to the stars go by without recompense.

“I said nothing,” I told the servant girl flatly. Another lie, but nearly everything about me was a lie. This mask, my name, even the color of my eyes. 

Before I left Asshai, I’d found a bazaar in the murky bowels of the trading district and exchanged three memories for a pair of shoes and drops that would turn my eyes from violet to a dark brown color, harmless, like molasses and russet. 

The memories I traded were ones I didn’t want anyway. Ones I couldn’t keep. Not if I was to live and continue living. At least that’s what I remember thinking. The memories themselves are lost to me, as they were severed from my soul only seconds after making the trade and I haven’t seen them since. Only the touch of someone who shares them can bring a traded memory back.

And I’m quite sure that all those who share my memories are long dead.

The skies in the east collided, with distant lightning sparking between their thick cloud banks. Thunder followed, rumbling with low growls. The wind gathered its strength, whispering at the sides of my mask and grasping at the hem of my robes. 

I turned to the girl in my courtyard, telling her insistently, “Leave the jars and hurry back to your quarters. A storm is coming.”

My words took no gifts of foresight. One look at the sky and everyone in Qarth would be rushing home, to shut their windows, light their candles and ride out a pair of storms that would likely be talked about for a generation. 

Once the servant girl was gone I reached up behind my head, unclasping the mask, peeling it from my face to feel the true flavor of those easterly winds. My fingers pressed against the smooth skin of my eyelids and down my cheeks, around my mouth, feeling the age lines beneath the illusion.

I rarely took the mask off, not even at night. There was safety behind that mask. A barrier between the reflection of glass and water. If I didn’t see myself, it was easier to pretend to be someone else. To forget who I once was. 

To be _Quaithe_ , a red priestess of mysterious origins and dangerous talents. With visions of the future to trade and sell, and no tragic past to weigh her down.

Ashara Dayne would never have left Asshai alive. She never would have survived as long as Quaithe. I was sure of it. I was _still_ sure of it.

But there were times when the mask seemed to suffocate me and I found myself gasping for air. And not the stifling air of Qarth, with all its spiced splendor. I craved the crashing waves of a faraway sea, a lonesome tower and a night sky filled with the stars I knew as a child. 

_A black kitten mewling in a basket._

_Rough, stolen kisses. A mistake of black hair._

_A slow dance at the end of the night._

_Dawn spilled with blood…_

Seventeen years ago, I was restless enough that I laid my mask aside for several weeks, dressing as a commoner, weaving white roses in my black hair, gilding myself in carnival silks and gold bangles, to play a traveling fortune teller along the coast. 

I needed my dreams to _stop_. The broken memories kept trying to mend themselves back together again and I thought a change in scenery might finally put them to rest.

I followed the traveling markets on their autumn circuit, moving down beyond the Jade Gates, wandering from harbor to harbor, reading palms and telling fortunes, some true, some a pleasant fantasy. 

Despite Xaro’s fears, I can’t see the future so clearly. Better than most, yes. But the future is rarely so certain. It’s a misty haze on the violet dawn, the details becoming fixed and discernible only as the sun rises and cuts the mist to the horizon.

But in a seaside village down the coast from Asabhad, I told at least one fortune that I know was as certain as the sunrise. 

I’d been sitting in my stall with my chin in one hand, the fingernails of my other hand drumming along the satin-covered tabletop, waiting on customers, watching the local residents explore the foreign wonders of the market. I read cards for a blacksmith and traded lesser fortunes for copper pennies and half a sweet pear around midday.

I had not expected to see Ser Jorah Mormont of Bear Island in Essos. Much less here, nearly at the edge of the known world, wandering a Jade Sea market with a woman whose hair was the same color as Rhaegar Targaryen’s and whose eyes were the same color as… 

_Ashara Dayne._ I tried never to think of my own name, not even in my head. 

But I didn’t linger on that dangerous thought for long. The distraction of seeing that Westerosi knight and his lady wander down the midway stole away all my attention. And she _must_ be his lady—the way she leaned on his arm, the grins she teased from that man so easily—they hid nothing of their connection, flushed and carefree as new lovers tend to be.

And yet, they must have been together for some time, as the young woman’s otherwise slim figure was swelling beneath her summer dress in a telltale way. She was carrying a child. A child whose bloodlines would be traced to Old Valyria and the First Men. I tipped my head slightly, seeking out a vision of that child’s face. 

“Daenerys, come. Let’s go home,” Ser Jorah was gentle with his suggestion, careful not to insist. I saw his lady concede, as she seemed a little tired and likely wanted to get off her feet. On their way out, they passed near my stall and impulsively, I jumped up from my stool and met them in the street. 

She met my gaze and I saw violet eyes stare back at me for the first time in over a decade. Not since I stared into a standing pool of tepid water in a back alleyway of Asshai, trying to wash my face and hands free of the grime and stains of that place.

I asked for her hand, which she gave freely. Her thoughts were transparent. She was in love, she was happy, and she knew her child would be a girl, without me saying a word about it. I traced a line down her palm to her wrist. I grinned at what I found written there and took a step forward, whispering the sweet fortune in her bent ear. 

I told Rhaegar’s sister that her child would have blue eyes, just like her father.

For there was no doubt on that score. All her children would have Jorah Mormont’s eyes. It was written on the palm of her hand very clearly. Perhaps in the stars above as well. Some things are just meant to be.

There were other things written there too. But more distant, all hazy, obscured by mist, waiting for sunlight to throw them into sharp relief.

And seventeen years later, as I stood under the bronze arch of my courtyard and watched those storms come to Qarth, I recalled one of those visions with dawning clarity. It had been pure nonsense at the time, so I ignored it, thinking it was just flickering shadows and dream vapors.

_Black wings, gold wings, a mountain of discarded slave collars set on fire._

But the vision came rushing back, as vivid as the day I took Daenerys Targaryen’s palm, and my eyes went wide, as my mask clattered to the stones at my feet. 

The storm was nearly upon us. I should go inside before I was caught out in the monsoon. My eyes stayed fixed on the clouds, not believing what I saw. This was no vision now, but how could it be real? From within the bruising of sky came a flash of black wings, followed by gold ones, riders on their backs, emerging from thunderclouds, outrunning the storms. 

If Pyat Pree was seeking wonders, he should leave his obsidian candles and look outside his window instead.

For two massive dragons were passing over the city of Qarth, headed straight west towards Slaver’s Bay.


	11. Threading the Skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a POV I've been wanting to write since...last summer? Aemon. Mormont. God, I love this kid <3 
> 
> Beary, _beary_ happy with the illustration this week, salzrand. Have I mentioned? 🐻🐻🐻🐻❤️

**_Aemon_ **

I know I should have been concerned about the weather. And maybe more concerned about the fact that we’d been blown so far off course in our mad dash to escape howling winds and sparks of lightning that we were now further from home than we’d ever been before. At least without our mother and father beside us. 

And I was. I promise.

But if I’m being honest, the only thought that was swirling through my head as we passed high above the ancient and glorious city of Qarth—which I missed seeing completely because the storm was forcing me to keep my head ducked against Bearfyre’s gold-colored scales—was the same thought that had been repeating over and over again since the storms first began colliding and Jeorgianna yelled out that we’d have to try and outrun them. 

_Mama will never let us out of the house again._

Because of course this would happen the first time I talked Mama into letting me go with Jeorgianna. It always happens like this. 

_Aemon Mormont, you are cursed._

I would have grumbled the words out loud to myself, except they would have been lost in the strong winds rushing past my sheltered head. 

At least Mama would know it wasn’t my doing this time. I couldn’t control the weather, could I?

I held tight to Bearfyre’s scales, my knees pressing against his leathery hide, urging the dragon forward through heavy, sodden clouds, thick as fog on the sea. Jeorgianna and Dark Sister were just ahead of us. Every once in a while, I risked a glance up, to make sure I could still pick out the back of my sister’s silver-blonde head, visible through the sprays of rain and shifting light, as we tried to outrun those storms.

It came up on us _so_ fast that even the dragons seemed surprised, and they usually could sniff out bad weather half a day away. It wasn’t so much the storm from the southern seas, although there were rough waters flooding the shores below and those gale winds would have given us trouble in any case. 

But the second storm, the one coming from the east, crawling down the high peaks and rolling along the dusty plains. It moved with a vicious will, unchecked, unfurling with skies that were so deep plum they went nearly black, with spider webs of blood red lightning reaching out from its dark interior. 

The dragons had no love for lightning. Or the rumbling thunder that came after.

We’d stayed ahead of the violent collision of those storm fronts for the better part of two hours, but we were losing ground. We couldn’t be caught in it. We had to press on, or risk a stray bolt of lightning striking us in flight. The dragons seemed to sense the heightened danger, keeping their speed and slicing towards whatever patches of blue sky they could pick out in the distance.

I think Jeorgianna was hoping we could bed down in the Bay at Port Yhos and wait it out. She’d called out her plan to me earlier, what parts I could decipher from words lost to the wind, telling me to follow closely and hold on tight. But the tailwind changed drastically soon after and that vicious storm from the east was nipping at our dragon’s curved talons and spiked tails. We could no longer exchange words over the rumbles of thunder and the wailing pitch of screaming winds, sending us pelting rain and hail in equal quantities. 

I clutched at the dragon’s neck, shielding my face from the driving rains, and let Bearfyre do the rest.

Jeorgianna was cutting a careful trail through the competing winds and I didn’t think twice about following her lead. Bearfyre did the same with Dark Sister, keeping pace through the cross winds and the odd tricks of light as the storm fronts collided nearly on top of us, sewing themselves up as one larger storm, using lightning as both needle and thread. 

Jeorgianna was a better dragonrider than me. This would always be true, even when were grown up, even on a day some years gone from this one—when she was heavily pregnant with my niece and really shouldn’t have been flying anywhere, but the sheer stubbornness of bears and…oh, that’s another story for another time. 

Anyway, I’d never try to argue the point. Jeorgianna was careful, she was calm, she was steady. Like Papa. And her impulses, rare as they were, were usually good ones. 

Had I been the one to pick up the black dragon from our great-uncle’s funeral pyre instead of the gold one, I don’t think I would have handled Dark Sister nearly as well. Dark Sister had a hot temper that only Jeorgianna seemed to keep in check. And that dragon was a jealous creature, by nature. 

If Mama or Papa ever attempted a solo ride, I hoped they chose Bearfyre. Or maybe Seadancer, as Daenielle’s dragon might be the sweetest-tempered of them all, for all his innate wildness and odd love of diving through crests of waves alongside pods of porpoises and whales. But Dark Sister, no. I wouldn’t put it past Jeorgianna’s dragon to shake Mama or Papa off mid-flight.

Or me, for that matter. 

But she _loved_ Jeorgianna and her love for my sister would get us out of more scrapes than this one, as Dark Sister expertly navigated the edge of the storms, and, as the miles from home grew distant, we finally found ourselves within reach of blue sky.

“ _Kasta_!” I caught only one of Jeorgianna’s commands before a thunderclap shook the very bones of sky behind Bearfyre, rattling the teeth in my head.

She was telling Dark Sister to fly towards clear skies. Towards the remnants of blue silk, fluttering behind grey and black tattered ribbons, all those wisps of cloud that kept closing around us, attempting to seal off our escape. The wings of the dragons struggled to beat them back. 

_Kasta_. The Valyrian word for “blue.”

We used to play a game with the dragons when they were still little. They were so clever, even as hatchlings. And once they’d grown into their wings and the strike of their sharp talons became less clumsy, we’d taught them to fetch a few things on command. Seashells, feathers, fish. They were good at that and brought the correct item nine times out of ten. So we decided to make the game a little harder and find out if they could distinguish color at the same time. 

We would ask them to fetch a blue fish or a green one. A red conch shell or an orange one. Seadancer and Daenielle both grew tired of the game quickly. Our little sister ran off to find her own treasures and her dragon skimmed the surf, dipping into its waves often, like a creature of sea instead of sky. The other two were more competitive and willing to play, getting the colors right almost half the time. But we could never tell if they truly knew the difference between shades of color or were just lucky.

I guessed lucky. 

But Papa never believed in luck. Luck was what fool’s put their trust in. He put no stock in it. He gave it no credence. He believed in being prepared.

“Keep your shield up,” he told me a thousand times, whenever we practiced swordplay in the yard, the sound of metal ringing out as we sparred on the white stones near Mama’s lemon trees.

We practiced with blunted blades at least three times a week, rain or shine. Both the girls too, and even Mama on occasion. There hadn’t been a war on the horizon since I was a toddler but that didn’t matter to our father. 

“The shield slows me down,” I complained, dropping that arm instinctively, while agilely jumping sideways to avoid his next strike.

“Good move, Aemon,” Grandfather gave some scant praise from where he watched on the sidelines. His words made me smile, which Papa didn’t appreciate. But Grandfather only spoke up if he was impressed. This made me a little too confident as I skipped away from another glancing blow, giving a cheeky little bow to my father, while slouching on that shield arm, despite his warnings.

It was heavy and I didn’t like the feel of it in my hand. I liked the carved bear on its face, but that was about it.

Papa was quick to take advantage and struck my shield head on, knocking it from my hand to clatter on the white stones. Without the cover, I had to roll away immediately, bringing my sword up to parry when Papa brought his down, unyielding, unrelenting, though not even at half strength, as I knew very well what my father was capable of.

“He’s faster without that shield, you have to admit it,” Grandfather allowed and Papa sent him a dark look, not interested in having a co-teacher for this particular lesson. 

“But not fast enough,” came a calm, smooth voice behind me. I felt cold metal against my throat. And then Jeorgianna’s sly, “Or should I say…not observing his surroundings enough?”

Jeorgianna had a blunt knife to my throat before I knew what was happening. I dropped my sword to the ground glumly, in sudden, unexpected defeat. My sister reminded me, with a snarky smirk, “Always watch your back, little bear.”

This garnered a huff of laughter from our curmudgeonly grandfather, which was possibly his highest form of praise. Papa suppressed his own grin, nodding at Jeorgianna with reserved approval, and shrugged at me, “You have to be prepared for anything, Aemon.”

_You have to be prepared for anything…_

The clouds parted by grace. 

Coming out of the storm, we were illuminated in brilliant sunlight from the western horizon, which cast strong beams along the underside of the dark clouds we emerged from, cutting it back. The storm’s chase slowed behind us, as it hunkered down over the lands to the east, content now to stew away in one place and pummel the countryside with its wrath. 

For the first time in hours, I was able to raise my head from Bearfyre’s scales and look at the sky and the ground below, without squinting through pellets of rain and icy hailstones.

“Are you all right, Aemon?” Jeorgianna called out from Dark Sister, half-twisting in her perch to look back and make sure I’d followed her out of danger. 

“Yes, I’m here!” I replied immediately, stroking Bearfyre’s neck as he opened his wings wider and soared. Both dragons relaxed on gentler thermals, letting the air itself keep them aloft as they let their strained muscles rest. Bearfyre languidly pumped his wings twice, until we rode side by side once more.

The weather was _so_ strange that day. Howling winds giving way to lighter breezes almost on the flip of a coin. Jeorgianna and I both looked at each other simultaneously, our expressions breaking into wide, giddy grins, as we exhaled on the grim tension of outrunning those storms. The danger quickly drained away. 

_We were lucky_. I thought, confidently.

 _Luck had nothing to do with it, Aemon._ My father’s voice was in my head, correcting me instantly…and this time, at least, he was right.

 _Fate._ The word rang in my head like a silver bell.

For how else to explain what happened next? 

How else to explain the fact that the storm cleared _just_ at that moment, just above the Red City of Astapor? We’d never seen that city before and wouldn’t have been able to guess just how far west the dragons had carried us until we made the trek home. But our eyes were drawn down to sudden commotion below, to witness a woman with black hair being dragged by guards down to the city’s long, stone pier, a place cluttered with crosses upon which groaning men and women were dying.

Even from this height, we could see the collar around that woman’s neck. And the way she fought tooth and nail against her captors, resisting. She was fierce and unwilling to go meekly to whatever end they had in store for her. She was outnumbered five to one, and the men who dragged her were showing little mercy.

They were going to kill her. We were about to watch someone die.

Jeorgianna and I exchanged another quick glance between us, graver this time, the giddy grins of a few moments before dying on our lips.

I don’t think either one of us thought twice. I’m not sure we _thought_ at all. Mama would have plenty to say about how little we thought later. 

_She’s never going to let you out of the house again._

But the dragons knew our feelings as well as anything, sensing the change in our demeanors immediately. We didn’t think. We didn’t consider. We only knew that those men below were going to kill that woman.

I gripped those golden scales tightly. With nary a spoken command, both Dark Sister and Bearfyre dove straight for the docks of Astapor.


	12. Chaos Theory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Favorite part of chaos theory - one beat of a butterfly's wings brings a hurricane 🦋
> 
> Second favorite part of chaos theory - who knows which old friends you might run into on the east side of the sea? 😘

**_Missandei_**

The day the storms came to the brink of Astapor, Master Kraznys thrust a paper scroll into my hands roughly and commanded me to read it out to the gathered ranks of his Unsullied.

The slave soldiers were all lined up in brass and steel, spilling out from the courtyard in numbers too great to count. Our master clutched the Harpy’s Fingers in his hand tightly, in anticipation. Many of the other good masters stood nearby as well, having been invited to witness this great culling firsthand. The first of its kind in many, many years.

All I had to do was read the formal words of introduction and step back, letting my master give the final, bloody orders. It was empty ceremony. It was done to assuage guilt. It was utter nonsense.

_We appreciate your service. We grant you the freedom of what lives may come. We give you back to your gods. The gods of rat, worm, flea and toad…_

I don’t know why I did it. 

I don’t know what changed or why. I just know that as soon as Master Kraznys pushed me forward and bade me speak, nineteen versions of the same word rushed into my head and I suddenly knew nothing but that single word. 

_No._

I shred that edict in two. I let the torn pieces fall to the limestone at my feet, raising my chin with a streak of defiance that I didn’t know lived within me. All the Unsullied watched me rip that paper in two. All of them saw me say “no.” 

Afterwards, there was dead silence. It hovered over the courtyard, with a distant echo of thunder doing little to fill the tense silence. It couldn’t have lasted more than a moment. The cacophony of commands from the ruffled masters came swiftly, loud and accusing. Rough, cruel hands were dragging me away from the dais within mere seconds.

Thinking back, I don’t think I could have stopped myself if I tried. Grey Worm couldn’t have stopped me either. He’d been standing in the front row of the Unsullied, with his helmet removed and held under his arm. He met my gaze with horror as he watched me rip that paper in two. 

I know he thinks he might have held me back, if only he’d guessed, if only he’d read my mind.

_This one can now read many things, but still not the mind of Missandei of Naath…_

The night before had been so ordinary. I’d been collecting the ledgers from my corner table in Master Kraznys’s counting chambers. It was the end of the day and I usually took the accounts and the tallies to my quarters so I could double check before presenting them to my master the next morning.

Errors were never tolerated and each one was worth a backhanded slap against my cheek, or the scratch of the Harpy’s Fingers. 

Grey Worm had returned from his patrol through the city and was leaving the palace for the barracks after his nightly briefing with our master. He walked through the palace halls with purpose, only slowing his steps when he caught sight of me. 

The sound of his footsteps brought my gaze up from those ledgers, as I knew who passed by, knowing the cadence of his steps too well. It was reckless of him to stop and stare. It was reckless of me to look up and stare back.

A small, shared smile darted across a marble floor and we might as well have been singing a chorus of “fuck the masters in all their gilded finery” for the entire palace to hear.

But we were guilty of far more than reckless looks and shared smiles by now. Reading lessons in the garden shed, intercepted notes between the good masters of Astapor and its sister cities…and stolen kisses. Too many to count. Too many to take back. 

And I didn’t want to take _any_ of them back. I hadn’t, not since the very first one.

We were in the garden shed, reading by the light of the full moon, as a lit candle was too risky. Like a little boy at his lessons, Grey Worm dutifully traced a page of letters in the common tongue, reciting slowly, “My name…is Grey Worm…I come from the Summer Ill…”

“ _Isles_ ,” I corrected him, emphasizing the longer vowel sound, while keeping my voice hushed and the lesson short. All of our lessons had to be short, as the moon’s light would not last and the windows of time in which we would not be missed were few. “Summer _Isles_.”

“ _Isles_ …,” he repeated to himself, nodding. “Like _I_.”

“Yes,” I answered, with encouragement. “Exactly.”

_“I”…not “this one.” Try to remember._

Grey Worm paused in his reading. His eyes strayed from the page, looking up at me and asking, in Valyrian, “Where is your home?”

The question surprised me. We rarely talked of anything that came before. But I replied after only a brief hesitation, as it was no secret, “The Island of Naath.”

I felt a wistful smile play at my lips, but it died almost as soon as it touched them. 

_An island of butterflies and white beaches…an island wreathed in flames._

I found myself returning my attention to the page, waiting for him to take up the recitation once more. I didn’t want to talk about my home. _Home_. But how could a place be home if I could barely remember it? I tapped the marked paper lightly, encouraging him to continue. But he was still looking at me. I felt his soft eyes fixed on my hair and on my face.

“When they took you?” he asked, so gently, compromising with my request to return to our lessons only by switching from Valyrian to the common tongue.

“When _did_ they take me,” I answered, correcting his grammar automatically. I sighed a little, as those memories, the few I still had, were all stored in a little treasure box in my head that had gone dusty from lack of use. My tone was flat, even to my own ears, allowing, “I was five years old.”

“You remember your home?”

“I remember when they rowed us away from shore. How white the beaches were, how tall the trees…,” I broke off.

But I remembered more—the sound of oars dipping in and out of the water, how the tall trees of the island were blackened bones, as everything was burning, smoke rising into the air. The village was on fire as we rowed away. And there were corpses on the white beaches, staining them red, left to be washed out by the tide. I didn’t tell him that part. I just went silent, and lowered my eyes again.

“You don’t like to speak of Naath,” he nodded, understanding well enough. He’d told me that he could remember nothing of the Summer Isles. Nothing before Unsullied.

“No,” I replied. 

It tore at wounds that were long scabbed over. If I thought of Naath, I would think of starfruit and salt breezes and blue and white butterflies until flames ate them all away. And then stupid tears of useless anger would sting at my eyes, and I would be tempted to set fire to this whole palace, just to burn away that one memory of flames in the sky and blood in the water. 

I didn’t like feeling that way. It was dangerous.

“No going back,” Grey Worm’s eyes stayed fixed on me, drawing mine up by the shine of gold flecks and hazy memories. He agreed, reminding me, “Only finding way front.”

“Forward,” I murmured the correction, but the word was lost in the diminishing space between us, as his hand was now resting on my own, gripping my fingers delicately. As if we were sitting on a white beach side by side, under a soft sea breeze and a silver moon reflecting off navy waves. Instead of in a garden shed, hiding our sins from the good masters. 

I don’t know who leaned forward first, but I felt my lips touch his, all warmth and damp skin, and suddenly, there were no more words to correct or learn. 

Not that night. Not in many nights to come. 

Looking back, I don’t know how we carried on like we did. But the masters weren’t paying attention. They were scrambling for funds and a way out of their path to ruin. They were too distracted. And too comfortable in a power they’d held for a thousand years. What we did was unthinkable so they didn’t consider it. They didn’t realize what transpired within their walls, right under their noses. 

Weekly, daily, hourly sometimes. 

There were missives that took me down to the barracks, and errands that brought him up to the palace. We’d passed by each other every day for more than ten years. It wasn’t a difficult thing to add to that routine. And a slave’s staircase or a hidden corner would serve us well enough for the span of a half minute, a kiss speaking a language that both of us knew instinctively, naturally…despite not having much practice.

The night before everything happened, he dared more than usual, giving a cursory glance up and down the empty halls before crossing the threshold. He came all the way to the corner desk, meeting me in the shadows and whispering, “This one can now read many things but still not the mind of Missandei of Naath…”

My little grin deepened by a degree, despite the terrible danger he put us in. Was he teasing me? Unsullied did not tease.

“What are Missandei’s thoughts?” he asked it plainly this time, recognizing the preoccupied look that had been on my face all evening and wondering at it, I’m sure.

“Many things,” I answered truthfully, keeping my voice low, before admitting the source of my current uneasiness, “The Tyroshi sellsword who came to the palace today…” 

Master Kraznys had received an envoy from the Second Sons, one of the company’s lieutenants. The visit was not heralded or expected. At least not by me. And humble translator that I might be, it was rare that my master would not give me the names of those we would receive in advance, as he expected me to greet each visitor in their native tongue and offer them drink or food that might be pleasing to their tastes. 

But when the dark-haired lieutenant arrived, I was surprised that the visitor greeted my master directly, in bastard Low Valyrian and with a tone that bordered on irreverent. 

I was further surprised that I was then sent from the Great Hall, together with the Unsullied guards and the stewards, leaving behind only two scantily-clad slave girls from Lys, who my master had bought for beauty alone, habitually boasting to Master Amirys and the other good masters that between the two of them, the girls might be able to form a single coherent thought. But no more.

The massive doors to the Great Hall were shut tightly while our master discussed his business with the Tyroshi sellsword. Grey Worm and I both waited just outside, casting more glances between each other than we might normally risk, as the actions of our master were strange and without precedence.

I found myself clasping my hands before me, rubbing my fingers a bit nervously, as we waited for the meeting to conclude.

And when it did, the Tyroshi opened the doors to the Great Hall himself, emerging with vigor, enough that I had to jump back from where I’d been loitering, with my ear bent towards the heavy doors, hoping to catch a word or two of the conservation had inside, muffled as it was.

“Apologies, pretty one,” the Tyroshi smirked when he saw me jump back with a soft yelp, missing a collision with the door by inches only. 

I bowed my head to the sellsword and said nothing in reply, backing away from his presence, hoping to fade away into the scenery once more. But the sellsword reached out and stopped me, smoothly pulling me back towards him and lifting my chin to take a better look at my face.

The Tyroshi was classically attractive, with dark, wavy hair not yet sporting more than a few grey locks, despite having recently left youth behind. His predatory smile said that he would ignore age as it came, and that he had a fondness for seeking beauty in as many places as it might be found. I was not as young as the Lysene girls who lounged in the Great Hall, and I wore a few more layers, but to this man, that seemed not to matter.

“Perhaps if your master had offered to have _you_ sit on my lap instead of those two Lysene nitwits, we might have had ourselves a deal,” he mentioned cheerfully, in a tone that straddled a line between salacious and matter-of-fact. 

The hollow sound of metal scraping stone resounded through the hall as Grey Worm shifted his shield to readiness and slanted his spear just enough, as a warning. The Tyroshi sellsword looked behind us to find the Commander of the Unsullied giving him a long, dark look.

“Or…perhaps not,” the sellsword shrugged, casting a bemused, seemingly all-knowing glance between the two of us, his smirk ever-widening. He released my chin with a suggestive pet, which I pulled away from. He turned from me, giving Grey Worm a wink before striding out of our master’s palace, nearly whistling.

One of the Lysene girls met me in the slave quarter’s later. She knew only bits and pieces of the Valyrian dialect so she couldn’t tell me the entire discourse between our master and the sellsword. But she’d heard one thing for sure and shared it with me, her eyes unsettled, her tone fearful.

“He said that the Second Sons may be short on honor but they would not be our master’s butchers,” she related, in a rushed whisper, leaving no room for doubt. She added, “At least not for the price our master set. Daario Naharis told Master Kraznys that the Second Sons would need ten times the price offered to even consider it.”

There was a sharp and eerie air in all of Astapor that night. Later, many would blame the feeling on the approaching storms. I blamed Master Kraznys, as I knew a single smirk from that Tyroshi sellsword would have put him in a foul mood that bled into the very walls of the palace and the surrounding streets. Given the foul mood that he’d been in for the last year or so, I knew it might push him to do something rash. 

To convince the masters to _act_. And to order the Unsullied to become their own butchers. 

“I think something awful is about to happen,” I admitted to Grey Worm, leaving the ledgers where they were, to cross my arms over my chest. There was a strange chill in my bones tonight, not caused by any impending weather. Grey Worm nodded, his hand rising and risking a soft caress to my exposed wrist. We all felt it. Something _was_ about to happen.

And something _would_ happen.

But the part I never expected… 

When Master Kraznys handed me that edict and told me to read it aloud, spitting the words in my face so I had to wince away from the spray of spittle—only then did I guess that I, Missandei from the Isle of Naath, might be the one to start it.


	13. Dragons in Astapor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wishing you all a peaceful, lovely day (aka pretty much the opposite of Grey Worm's day here), and Happy Easter to those who celebrate! <3

**_Grey Worm_ **

Rage. 

When they took Missandei, I knew only rage. When they dragged her from the platform, I was rage. The spear in my hand was no better than a stick, for I would use my bare hands to destroy those who laid their fists and whips on Missandei. I was no longer Unsullied. I wore a collar beneath my armor still but all the chains in my head were torn off and I was _free_.

Free to kill. Free to die. It did not matter.

Once, some years ago, I dreamed of Missandei on a battlement some place far away, standing beside a woman dressed in red and gold. I dream Missandei’s head was severed from her body and then thrown from that castle wall. 

I woke from that dream in a rage too. One that was tempered by the daylight hours.

But this was no dream. This was truth. And there was no temperance left inside of me. The masters ordered their Astapori guards to seize Missandei and drag her away for punishment and justice. She had defied the masters in front of all the Unsullied. 

_Why did you do this thing?_ My eyes had begged the question before they took her. But she gave me no answer. There was no answer. No words. Only a scroll of paper torn in half. 

She would not survive their punishment. This, I knew.

Master Kraznys would make sure. He left the dais to follow his guards down to the Walk, to supervise. To watch his translator, a woman who had never done anything but smooth over his worst words and greet his guests with kindness they did not deserve, be beaten and nailed to a cross. Where she would die and where seabirds would pick away at her corpse.

And this I could not abide.

I broke from the ranks, something punishable by death. And not a quick or easy one. I ran after them. Some of my men thought it was our master’s will that compelled me to run and came with me, thinking we were following orders. Orders from our master.

But they were following me. Only me.

Clouds of dust rose up from the palace path as our boots slapped the dry clay under heavy footfalls. Astapor would not see rain that day, despite the eastern storm clouds that came so close, like black fingers crawling out from some dark, hideous place. The city would see fire and blood before nightfall, with dust and ashes in the air. 

And no cleansing rain to wash any of it away.

We didn’t catch up with them until they were already on the Walk of Punishment. One of the Astapori guards had a fistful of Missandei’s hair, pulling her forward, and another had kicked her to her knees, bloody and scraped raw, as they were dragging her over the stones. But they were struggling too, as she fought them with every step and with every ounce of strength she had. For she was brave. Braver than any Unsullied. Braver than any man I ever meet.

With angry, violent curses, Master Kraznys ordered his guards to take her in hand. To beat her down quickly, breaking her in body and spirit, as he knew the other slaves were watching—both those who groaned, nailed to crosses, and those who gawked, passing the road by the water. 

Never had a slave gone to the crosses with such a fight. All were stopping to stare and watch. 

They would kill her soon, for Missandei’s screams seemed to swallow up the whole of the city. They could not allow that. And I was too far away to stop them.

In the distance, those black clouds thundered with much lightning. I thought for a moment that maybe this one, Grey Worm, of nothing and no one, had somehow conjured the mood of the sky, as the violence in those clouds echoed the violence in my head and heart. 

I would _kill_ all the masters. And I would kill any Unsullied who stood in my way. It was rage. With every blow they laid upon Missandei, my rage grew hotter and stronger.

But I was _still_ too far away. 

“Missandei!” I could only cry out her name, like a useless prayer. The Unsullied who had followed me from the palace must have known then, if not before, that my actions did not come from our masters. That what I intended to do would not be something that could be taken back. That we would all likely die that day.

But no Unsullied who followed me tried to stop me. And they did not turn back. White Rat, Red Toad, Black Flea and the others—all with names too much like this one. Our spears were raised, our footfall desperate, but Missandei would be dead before we reached her. 

I heard a howl. A screech. A _roar_.

At first I thought it was the storm, but those clouds were too far away. And the noise was too loud, coming down from the skies above us. And increasing…

All of us looked to the sky—the Unsullied, the Astapori guards, Master Kraznys and those gathered on the Walk. Missandei too, although they had battered her face enough on the way down from Master Kraznys’s palace that I’m not sure her swollen eyes would give her more than a glimpse of what came down from those stormy skies. 

Two horned beasts, built of armored scales and leathered wings, descended upon the city of Astapor with open jaws and outstretched talons.

_Dragons…_

It did not matter that no one in Astapor had seen a dragon before. It did not matter that there were no dragons left in the world. Not for many, many years. It did not matter. Not one of us who saw what happened that day could mistake those beasts for anything but the dragons of old stories.

Dragons had come to Astapor, hatched from those black storms that threatened to crest our border. 

The gold one landed on the Walk itself, rumbling the ground beneath our feet with his weight. His jaws snarled and snapped at the guards holding Missandei, and they dropped her, fumbling for their swords and spears. She fell in a crumpled heap to the dusty stones at their feet. 

The black dragon followed, perching at the stone wall that lined the sea, very near Master Kraznys. The waters on the sea had turned rough and waves smashed against the sea wall at the same time the dragon touched down, adding to a glorious spray that fell across the Walk as a sudden flood.

The dragons were not alone. 

A boy rode the gold one and a girl not much older was astride the black one, both with severe expressions on their young faces, their eyes on Master Kraznys and his Astapori guards. These looked like children, but on the backs of dragons, they must be angels? Where had they come from? Did the gods of the sky send us these signs, both glorious and terrible? And for what reason? Why now? Why here?

The Astapori guards drew their swords as the gold dragon snorted fire and dug his claws into the old stonework on the Walk. The black dragon sniffed at Master Kraznys as if smelling something rotten and rancid. The dragon growled with a low, shuddering rasp, followed by a snared rumbling that grew deep in the dragon’s reddening throat. 

My master backed up quickly, as the silver-haired girl on the black dragon urged the beast to step down from the stone wall, one step and then another, slow but deliberate. Master Kraznys was falling over himself, sprawled on the sand-swept stones, crawling away on hands and knees while swearing in Valyrian, “Fuck me!” 

The black dragon and her rider did not like my master’s tone. Master Kraznys was marked by the dragon, her slit eyes focused on her scurrying prey. My master remembered himself finally, his own sense of defiance and delusion running deeper than anyone else in this city. He threw glances from side to side, seeking out his Astapori guards on one side and Unsullied on the other, as we were still running to join the fray, despite the dragons. 

“Kill it!” he ordered us all. “Use your spears, you sons of maggots! Protect your master! _Kill_ the fucking beast!”

Some of my Unsullied might have gone to his aid, out of habit. But I stopped them short with eyes of stone and words of steel, “Stand your ground!”

The Astapori guards who had abandoned Missandei were more willing, but easily flicked out of the way by a forceful snap of the golden dragon’s tail, one hundred times more powerful than the familiar crack of the Harpy’s Fingers, which Master Kraznys had lost in his furious crawling. The black dragon stepped on the whip heavily as she took another step forward, crushing the dragonbone handle underfoot. 

“ _Dracarys_!” the silver-haired girl on the dragon’s back gave a single command in Old Valyrian, as all looked on, horror stealing over our master’s twisted features. 

The dragon opened her mouth, baring her sharp teeth once before that dark red flame in her throat burst forth as orange fire, pouring out and engulfing Master Kraznys in a tower of flames. The man could do no more than raise his hands against the fire, screaming out as his flesh burned off his body. 

The Astapori guards who rushed at the dragon fared no better.

But my eyes were not on these men. I watched as the boy on the gold dragon slid down the beast’s scales, landing on the stones nimbly before rushing to Missandei’s unconscious body. 

I did not know where these dragons came from, or who these children were, or why they had come to Astapor. I knew only that they seemed to want to help Missandei and punish those who had tried to kill her. Although fire surrounded me, I was unafraid and instantly running forward to help that boy lift Missandei from the ground.

Her face was swelling already, with deep gashes and blackening bruises that mangled her beautiful face. Her hands were cut open where she’d caught the edge the Harpy’s Fingers over and over again, trying to stop the sting as they sliced at her with lashes. Her body was limp and I wondered if she was dead already. I did not check Missandei’s pulse, not wanting to know the answer.

“She cannot stay here,” I told the boy beside me. As I gently lifted her from the stones, I grimaced at how her head rolled back in my arms. The boy moved fast, understanding the urgency. He whistled to the gold dragon.

“Bearfyre, down!” the boy gave a curt motion with his hand, briefly lowering his palm towards the ground. The dragon responded to the command without question, lowering its long neck and kneeling on its front haunches. 

I gathered Missandei from the dust, leaving too many bloodstains behind. _Her_ blood. I swallowed back the rage that was still fueling my every action. As I held her in my arms, I thought I heard her moan in pain and hoped it was true. Not for the pain, which I felt like sharp cuts and throbbing bruises against my own skin. But only because it would mean she was still living. 

I took Missandei to the dragon, as there was nowhere else to go. I could not manage the common tongue, begging in Valyrian, “Take her please. Get her to safety!” 

But these children knew my mother tongue as if it was theirs as well. How? And where had they come from? Who were they? I had no time to ask these questions, as we had to move quickly. Master Kraznys’s body was charred beyond recognition and still bathed in fire. But he was not the only master in Astapor.

“Up here!” the boy urged me, climbing back up the dragon’s scales just as nimbly as he’d disembarked, reaching down and helping me lift Missandei to a level perch between the beast’s massive shoulder muscles, where the boy could keep her from falling as they took flight. 

“Hurry, Aemon!” the silver-haired girl called out to the boy, seeing the impending danger too clearly from her perch.

The earth was shuddering again. From growling thunder in the east, and from the marching step of thousands of Unsullied soldiers, filing down from Master Kraznys’s palace at the commands of the other good and wise masters gathered there, to hunt down those of us who broke ranks and bring us to justice.

But the Walk of Punishment was on _fire_ and, in their march down, the others had watched me lift Missandei onto the back of a dragon. They saw another dragon burning our master alive. They would see me at the center of this madness, unburnt, untouched, speaking with that boy dragonrider as if this had been a plan from the beginning.

There was no plan. There was only fate. And chance. A chance to get Missandei to safety. And I took it without thinking.

“Come with us,” the boy reached a hand down to help me up as well. But I had work left to do in Astapor.

“No, go!” I told those children, with a steely voice that would soon command the ranks of my brothers, charging them to seize the city. “Now!” 

The silver-haired girl echoed my commands. Her eyes were fixed on the legions headed our way, with long spears that might easily be leveled at the dragons’ hides. 

In a rush of wings, the dragons were gone, lifting off and gaining great heights within seconds. On her way, the black dragon grabbed at one of the last Astapori guards, piercing him with an outstretched claw and dropping him like a stone into the harbor.

The strong winds of their lift fanned the flames left behind, as some of the crosses and wood lining the inner walk had caught fire and were spreading, licking along the docks as if everything were bathed in hot oil.

The ranks of Unsullied who approached the spectacle of fire and blood slowed their steps. The masters had given them orders. But I was their Commander. When in doubt, they looked to me. 

Master Kraznys was no longer screaming, charred to a black crisp. His guards were dead, three on fire, one drowning in the harbor.

I thought of Missandei’s bloodied face. I thought of her limp body in my arms. And that collar around her neck. Now she was gone. Perhaps forever.

I clenched my fist. In that moment, this one was rage. _I_ was the storm.

I picked up my brass helmet and spear from where I’d thrown them on the ground. I hopped onto the white stones that a dragon had been perched on only moments ago, with fire licking the ramparts on either side of me. 

I placed my helmet over my head and raised my spear high, as a call to arms, speaking out in a loud, fevered voice for all to hear, “Kill the masters!”


	14. Love In Deep and Shallow Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Daenerys kiss'd me when we met,  
> Jumping from the chair she sat in;  
> Time, you thief, who love to get  
> Sweets into your list, put that in!  
> Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,  
> Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,  
> Say I’m growing old, but add,  
> Daenerys kiss'd me."
> 
> -Jorah's favorite variation on "Jenny Kiss'd Me" <3
> 
> Also not sure how you're going to survive salzrand's art for this chapter. I didn't. You're currently speaking to the ghost of the fangirl formerly known as ladymelodrama :) :) :)

**_Jorah_ **

In years to come, they would say it was the worst storm to hit the Jade Sea in a generation, and I…slept through nearly half of it.

I should’ve listened to Daenerys and stayed in bed the day before but I thought I’d beat that cold by wholly ignoring it. I’m a stubborn fool sometimes, as Daenerys knows well enough. I coughed my way through much of the night, drifting in and out of fever dreams that jolted me awake too many times to count.

A royal pardon, poachers begging for mercy, my father’s sword, dead men rising in the Haunted Forest—I groaned on those cruel dreams, willing them to let me be. But I slept little, even when the dreams stopped. 

The next day I rested and was better for it, but my body insisted on regaining the sleep I’d lost. I couldn’t keep my eyes open as I listened to Daenielle read those same old stories that I once used to put _her_ to sleep. When I woke to Daenerys sitting beside me, her hand clasped in mine, she was able to convince me to drink that lukewarm tea and shut my eyes once more with little trouble. 

Her gentle caresses over my palm were a soothing and rhythmic balm that lulled me away. And I fell asleep with the image of her sweet face imprinted on my mind’s eye, as so often happened, her voice echoing softly over my more rambled thoughts. 

_I’ve loved you for more than half my life. Did you know that?_

While violent thunderstorms and hailstorms and an honest-to-goodness hurricane swept up the coast and over half the continent of Essos besides, I found myself lost in tranquil rest. With no fever to send me into those spiraling, unkind realms of nightmares and long buried regrets.

Instead, my mind was content to relive and chew on an old memory that I kept close at all times, one of many like it, of a long ago walk in the woods with my wife. Although she wasn’t my wife then. Not quite yet. 

This was before Jeorgianna’s birth, before our wedding day—nearly twenty years ago now. I could scarcely believe so much time had passed as I could pick out the minute details of that afternoon hiking up in the hill country like it was yesterday.

Daenerys had worn cornflower blue, with a silk sash tied up in her long hair. Her skin was healthily tanned, as she’d spent months beneath a more temperate sun, no longer burnt and peeling from the desert’s harsh glare. Her violet eyes had begun to sparkle once more, finally losing that hollow, vacant look that had haunted her expression since the night of Rhaego’s death. 

I _hated_ that look, a look of hopelessness and pain that went deeper than I could dig out, no matter how many soft words or gentle touches I might offer. I spent two weeks perched at her sickbed when we first came to this place, watching her struggle to shake off a raging fever that had settled in her body and a bleak despair that had settled over her mind, utterly convinced I’d lose her, to one or the other. 

Even if she wasn’t mine to lose. No, not then. Not just yet.

She’ll tell me otherwise now— _I was yours from the moment you held me in the desert night and hushed my tears away, Jorah_ — but I wouldn’t have presumed, I wouldn’t have _dared_ let myself think any such thing back then. 

But as time went on, and as she healed and _lived_ and we found our way in this new life, I couldn’t deny the truth of what happened between us. That day I took her inland to the hill country was no more than a week after she’d first kissed me on the villa’s balcony. I woke up the next morning with Daenerys in my arms, our naked bodies entwined. I’d go to sleep that night in much the same manner. 

And every night thereafter. 

I had a day’s respite from work, as two of the ships I sailed on were in dry dock for repairs and we’d had a month of good fishing around the outer islands and up the Yi Tish coast, allowing a well-earned break from the nets. Autumn was nearly upon us and there would be leaner times ahead, but for now, there was still an air of abundance and prosperity, and the joys of a summer that seemed endless. 

One of the local sailors had told me about a pair of high, white waterfalls in the hills above our coastal home whose sight rivalled the wonders of the known world. I knew he was likely spinning tales and doubted that he’d seen enough wonders to judge fairly, but the waterfalls were within riding distance of the villa and I thought Daenerys might like to explore our new home a little more. 

At breakfast, I asked her if she wanted to try and find those falls. She grinned at me and said, with a pretty flush to her cheeks, “As long as we spend the day together, I don’t care what we do.”

Daenerys loved so openly and fell in love so earnestly, that I felt almost shy with her newfound attentions, having never expected them, having _rarely_ experienced them, and tending towards gloomy reserve myself. But I loved her attentions. I loved _her_. That day, I hadn’t told her so yet. But I was convinced she must know it anyway. 

I’d loved her for so long, it felt like always. Even then, I struggled to remember the exact moment it happened. 

When I gave her those old books, I suppose. At her wedding to another man. The idea was tragically laughable, but there was little I could do to argue against it. The heart follows no set course. Seeing Daenerys, feeling the feather brush of her fingers against my own—everything that came before suddenly felt inconsequential. I’d lived a life before her, but what sort of ghost life had it been? How could there be _life_ when she wasn’t in it? 

“Keep up, old man,” she teased me jovially, from a few steps further up the forest path, as I was lagging behind just a little, thinking deeper thoughts than the day called for. 

Her pace was animated and she was nearly bouncing, as the woods were draped in late summer, alive with songbirds and golden shadows, sunlight flickering through a high, wide-reaching canopy of deciduous trees above us. She told me plainly, “It’s not a day for somber thinking.”

“No?” I played along, finding myself grinning too easily. Her manner was so light these days, youthful and vibrant. I fell headlong into it.

As a Northerner, I’d always wondered how Rhaegar Targaryen could convince so many men to fight on his side during the Rebellion, especially after what happened with Lyanna Stark. Or later, when his father burned that girl’s father and brother alive, with a chilling madness that was impossible to deny by anyone from Hardhome to Sunspear. 

But if Rhaegar Targaryen had half the charms of his younger sister, I could see myself following the dragon prince to the ends of the earth, no matter what he’d done. Gods forgive me, I’d follow Daenerys anywhere. To the stinking pits of the deepest hells, if she asked.

“No,” she was shaking her head cheerfully, slowing her steps and reaching back to take my hand in her own. “I forbid your deep thoughts today.”

“How do you know my thoughts are somber ones?” I countered, as my fingers curled around hers, bringing our joined hands up to press a kiss against her knuckles. 

Whatever my thoughts had been minutes before, I was currently indulging in visions of her silver-blonde hair splayed out on white pillows, her pleasured moan as she begged me not to stop, the taste of her skin, throat to navel, all laced with sweat and the lemon and jasmine scents of a long summer night, the hungry, hooded look in her stunning violet eyes. 

“Because I know you, Jorah Mormont,” she replied, intelligently, reading me too easily. She tilted her head slightly to one side as she continued, “And I know that if I give you time to think about anything, you have a tendency to turn very grave and serious.”

“It’s an old habit, I’m afraid,” I teased back, squeezing that hand I held just a little. There was more than minor truth in the self-deprecating admission that followed, “I’m not sure I can break it, _Khaleesi_.”

“You’ll have to try, _Ser_ ,” she answered, as her free hand came around to join the others, locking mine in place between her own. She brushed her shoulder against my upper arm as we continued climbing that path at a wanderer’s saunter. She promised me, “I intend to banish _all_ your somber thoughts away, Jorah.”

Then she stopped us short in the middle of the path, leaning up to plant a slow, sultry kiss against the highest point on my jawline, her lips tilting higher to graze at my ear lobe as she pulled back, whispering, “Race you to the top?” before darting away with a girlish squeal. 

I attempted to keep her in my clutches but failed. She was too quick, her hands slipping through my unprepared fingers with unexpected speed, off and running up a path of scarlet and golden leaves, lacy summer flowers and grey twigs, all bathed in equal parts sunlight and shadow, with the hem of her cornflower dress and silver-blonde hair trailing behind her. 

Her laughter echoed through the thick woods, mixing with my own. The chase was a short one, as we soon came to a rushing stream which crossed the wooded path, one of many smaller tributaries feeding the waterfalls ahead. The stream was shallow but wide, and still deep enough that Daenerys would soak her shoes if she stepped down into the cool rush of gurgling water. 

Large stones littered the stream bed, and she jumped from one black rock to another, keeping her balance by stretching out her hands. But in her hurry, she soon found herself at a dead end of her own making, still only halfway across the water, with no escape. A woodland maid stuck in the middle of the stream.

I smirked wider then, taking my time before striding off the low banks and into the shallows, wading towards her casually, like a bear that has caught his salmon at the bend of the stream and knows it well enough. 

“What’s your plan now?” I asked her as I came near enough to snatch her down from her perch, if I wished to. 

We were standing nearly eye to eye, I in the stream and she on that rock. I crossed my arms over my broad chest, waiting for her to admit defeat. She wasn’t ready to yield, her gaze still darting over the surrounding waters, all pebbles, drowned weeds and tiny, silver fish. She sought escape, but there was none to be found.

“I don’t know,” she muttered finally, before pouting too prettily for me to take any pleasure in the victory. The game was over but I’d rather she had won. That day and in many days to follow, I wanted her to win everything. Always. She bit her bottom lip slightly, admitting without tease, “I don’t want to ruin these shoes.”

“Come on, then,” I said with a mock sigh, uncrossing my arms and turning in the water, offering my strong back to my stranded girl. “Hop on.”

She smiled. I know she smiled, even if I couldn’t see it. I heard it in her voice, as I felt her take my shoulders and scramble up onto my back, her arms coming to rest around my neck, taking a secure hold as she breathed at my ear, “Thanks for the rescue.”

“Anytime, love,” I answered, the tender endearment slipping out before I could stop myself. 

Inwardly, I shuddered on it, thinking I’d said more than I should. This was all so new, to both of us. But as I hooked my arms under her legs and carefully carried her across the width of that stream, I felt her relax against me, one of those hands around my neck moving down to caress the skin just below my shirt collar absently. 

“I love you too, Jorah,” she murmured with affection, turning her head slightly to grant me another kiss, this one against the curls just above my ear.

The sunlight and shade flickered on those rushing waters. The songbirds continued their singing. The tinkling sound of the stream babbling over rocks, and the roaring crash of waterfalls in the distance, almost like low thunder—the sailor hadn’t been spinning tales on its natural beauty after all. 

But then…

The softer sounds of the woods gave way to something else. The crash of a waterfall became the low growl of thunder. The flickering sunlight was recast as the distant flash of lightning, with gusting winds and steady rain claiming the songbirds’ melodies. 

As I woke fully, I recognized the sound of a storm. There were many candles lit around the house, as if it were the middle of the night, but I knew I hadn’t slept that long.

There, in the front room, watching from a safe distance under the high archway, I saw the familiar silhouettes of Daenerys and my father, at either end of the decorative moldings, with Daenielle lifted up in Father’s strong arms so she could see over the balcony’s stone ledge out to the restless waters, where the black sky was tussling with the grey sea. 

We would be spared the worst of it, as they say the hailstones that fell in Qarth that day were the size of a man’s fist. There were harbors further up the coast that would have wooden ships splintered in the surf before this was done, village roofs torn off, floods in the lowlands and a fire in the mountains from errant strikes of lightning that would burn a swath of forest the size of Dragonstone to charred, ashy ruins.

The air was charged and the gusts and howls of wind brought a harrowing sound to the northern part of the house, where it battered at the glass windows. But when I woke, the sheets of rain had already started to steady and the more violent fingers of that storm were swirling westward, grasping at the country beyond us. 

Despite the storm, I felt refreshed after sleeping for so long, peeling off the blanket that Daenerys must have thrown over my knees and rising from my chair. I felt strength returning to my limbs, the aches from yesterday absent, my head no longer buzzing, my chest no longer under assault. 

I joined my family in the archway to watch the fierce glory of the southern sky, as it lit up every few minutes with cuts of jagged lightning. From Father’s arms, Daenielle pointed out a spider’s web of forked lightning in the east, even as the southern sky cracked with much the same. 

Father and Daenielle didn’t hear me approach, but Daenerys turned as soon as she felt my hands slide to their familiar rest at her waist. She spun quickly at my touch, a measure of relief cast across her features at the sight of me up and on the mend. But her relief was short-lived. The candlelight in the villa was flickering in drafts of storm breezes, but I could still she her face clearly enough. And the haggard misery written there. 

My heart clenched at the uncommon sight of her tears, chasing away all semblance of serenity which that dream-memory had instilled in me. What had happened? Why had she let me sleep? Surely, she wasn’t afraid of the storm? Father and Daenielle were here beside her. And Jeorgianna and Aemon…

My heart went cold.

“Oh, Jorah…,” Daenerys’s voice was breaking with a mother’s worry, grasping at my arm for support that had been withheld from her while I was sleeping. With tears trailing down either side of her face, she shook her head miserably, confirming my fears, “They aren’t home yet…”


	15. There's Always Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 <3 <3

**_Jeorgianna_ **

My mind was reeling. Thoughts came and went, scattered like raindrops on the ocean. I tried to think of where to go and what to do next. What my mother or father would do… 

_Gain your bearings, Jeorgianna. Stay calm. Focus on the matters at hand._

The dragons skirted the storm, flying south to open waters. I pushed myself up against Dark Sister’s hide, crawling forward and peering down at the sea as it passed below, looking for landfall. Any secluded scrap of rock or earth would do. 

We’d flown _far_ west. Farther west than I’d ever traveled on Dark Sister before. There were maps in my head from the books at home and I tried to piece together our location from half-remembered city names scrawled along the western borders. We’d passed over Qarth many hours ago and the dragons had been flying at full speed, outrunning those terrible storms. 

Could we have flown all the way to Slaver’s Bay? It seemed impossible. And I couldn’t be sure, but I had a gut feeling that my brother and I had just set fire to the docks of Astapor.

I cringed to myself, guessing what Mama and Papa would say when they discovered what we’d done. My father’s brow would furrow, my mother’s fiery gaze, under eyebrows nearly knit together, would speak louder than any words ever could. 

_How, Jeorgianna? How did this happen?_

I didn’t know myself. I hadn’t had time to breathe. We were in the air and then it was all on fire. Everything happened so fast. I felt a sinking pit in my stomach dig deeper, knowing the gravity of what had just happened. 

News of this would spread. How could it not? If ever there was a way to let the grand old cities of Essos know that dragons had returned to the world, this was possibly the worst way to do it.

Oh, I wished my father was with me. He’d know what to do. 

_You know what to do, Jeorgianna. Here we stand._

I didn’t regret interfering. We couldn’t let that woman die. Not like that, outnumbered, helpless, beaten to death by men twice her size. I don’t care what she did. No one deserved an end like that. But the army of men that had been marching down to the docks, thousands of them rushing down to meet us…

There were other matters brewing in that city that had nothing to do with us. It was a matter of timing that no one—not my brother nor I, not the woman we rescued, nor the cruel men we burned—had expected. 

We wouldn’t find out until much later, but our strange, serendipitous arrival was nothing short of a matchstick lighting a tinderbox. The explosion that followed would spread like wildfire from Astapor, all the way to the Great Pyramid in Meereen, burning the old ways to charred ruins and changing the face of Slaver’s Bay forever.

But as we flew across the water, I didn’t know any of that. 

I only knew that we had to tend to the injured woman’s wounds quickly. And the dragons needed to rest. There was a severe hitch in the lift of Dark Sister’s wings and Bearfyre couldn’t be much better, having flown just as far and now bearing a second rider. 

I wanted to go home, but home was hundreds of miles away, under siege from storms we wouldn’t dare fly through a second time. 

My eyes searched the sea below, desperately. I didn’t know this part of the Summer Sea. I didn’t know its dangers or its people. But I knew the sea. I’d grown up beside it. I knew how to pick out tiny, uninhabited islands from great heights. We just needed one without…

“There!” I called out to Aemon, casting a glance back at my brother, who was struggling to make sure his unconscious passenger stayed aloft with the uneven gait of a tired dragon. We needed to land now. I stretched out my hand, pointing down at a speck of island that was maybe half a league away. “Do you see it?”

“I see it,” Aemon nodded over the beat of his dragon’s wings, approving the choice. 

The breezes were quieter than in the clutches of the storm, and the distant thunder grew faint here, where sunshine bounced off calmer waves. The dragons turned towards the little island without commands, perhaps reading our minds, perhaps making the decision without us, as they were exhausted and could not continue much farther, in any case.

Dark Sister let out a rasping growl as we landed on the white sands of a short, almost non-existent beach. The growl was made in relief and as a muted warning, for any resident of that desolate speck of earth. A flock of cormorants flew off in a rush, from where they’d been perched in the sparse grove of palm trees, squawking indignantly at the sight of trespassers to their little haven. 

But they were just visitors too, likely blown west by the storms. The island was too small for anyone to live on, even birds. It was an atoll, no more. 

And it reminded me of the outermost spray of the Pearl Islands near home. They were just a scattering of black rocks and ribbons of warm sand peeking out from blue-green water, of no use to anyone. Not even pirates who wished to bury a cache for safekeeping, as the treasure might be too easily swept out to sea in rough waters.

But it was useful to my sister, my brother and me, as we used the Pearl Islands as a landmark for racing the dragons and often touched down to explore its reefs and lagoons on clear afternoons made up of sunshine and surf. Those little islands served as our own personal hideaway, where we playacted as heroes and heroines from all the old stories. 

Some newer stories too—the Long Night wasn’t our only game but certainly one of our favorites.

“I’ll be Papa,” Aemon was predictable in his choice, often calling it out before I had a chance to argue. And he would fashion a twig into Heartsbane and start hacking and slashing at the poor island’s undergrowth as if it were a teeming horde of dead men, until I told him to leave the poor sea grass alone.

“Ah, Jeorgianna,” he would wave me off. “It’ll grow back.”

“Who am I?” Daenielle wondered when she played this game with us the first time. She was no more than four or five at the time. It was the first time Aemon and I had dared take her to the islands. Mama didn’t know we were flying on the dragons yet. She thought we were collecting seashells and starfish down on the beach. 

“You’ll be Princess Shireen,” I told her, lifting her up into my arms while I carried her over a pair of uneven tide pools, careful to watch my barefooted steps on sharper bits of orange coral. I balanced my little sister on my hip as I waded through shallows to a dry stretch of beach and a spot where we’d piled two pieces of bone-white driftwood on top of each other. The driftwood would serve as a pretend pyre. 

As I set Daenielle down again, I added, “And I’ll be Mama.”

“Why Mama?” Daenielle asked, putting her little hands on her little hips. She’d heard this story before but likely forgot again. It wasn’t the same for her, as she hadn’t been born yet when we went to Westeros. She didn’t remember sitting in that upstairs room in Mole’s Town with Gilly and our Uncle Aemon, as Mama rushed out. 

_Bar the door. Don’t let my children leave this room._

Aemon barely remembers it. He says he does, even to this day, but I have my doubts.

“Because Mama saved the princess that night by jumping into the fire,” I explained, reminding her again. “She’s a hero, Daenielle.”

“Nah,” Daenielle grinned on the strange idea. “She’s just Mama.”

“And who am I supposed to be in this scene?” Aemon crawled over black rocks to join us, taking the longest, most difficult route, as was his habit. I’d set up this scene so I was choosing the players this time. He asked, hopeful, “Ser Davos?”

“No…,” I looked around at my feet casually, finding a long length of red seaweed in the shallows. I pulled it free from the briny water. When Aemon finally joined us, I reached forward and placed the leathery, scarlet fronds on my brother’s head, teasing, “I think you’ll make a fine Lady Melisandre.”

Daenielle giggled at the sight of Aemon in a seaweed wig and Aemon growled like a little bear—he didn’t object to playing a girl, as he and I took turns being Mama, and Visenya and Rhaenys were both coveted roles when we playacted as the old time Targaryens, but none of us ever wanted to play the red witch. 

In a flash, my brother ripped the red seaweed off his head, throwing it back into the surf at my feet. I squealed as a large splash of water followed, and then all three of us were running along the ringed beaches, hollering and chasing and moving on to other games, as our three dragons played likewise, in the air above us, flying, diving, skimming the waters, with home always only a few miles away at most.

But this island was hundreds of miles from home. And Aemon and I weren’t playing pretend. 

As soon as we touched down, I hopped down from Dark Sister and ran to help my brother with the injured woman. She was still unconscious, the deeper gashes bleeding enough that my hands were soon covered in her blood. We laid her on soft sand, resting her head on my knees.

“I need something to stop the bleeding,” I said to Aemon, who hovered beside me, anxious and ready to help. I had no medicine, nor clean cloth. Bithia was so fond of saying “there’s always something” but…I looked around our sparse surroundings. Sand, palm trees, seawater, saddle bags on the dragons…

Fresh water. The canteens!

“Water, Aemon,” I told him, my eyes continuing to dart around the small island. _There’s always something._ I added, “And…spider webs? Look for cobwebs in the long grass and moss beneath the trees. Either might work.”

My brother didn’t have to be told twice. He fetched the water and went into the small patch of palm grove to find what he could to clot the wounds. Those men had been unkind, pummeling the woman with their fists and bruising her flesh all over. But it was the lacerations from the lashes that I was worried about most, as the leather whips struck deep, criss-crossed on her back and mangling her bloody hands.

I washed the wounds as best I could, and used the cobwebs that Aemon gathered to stuff the wider wounds, tearing off strips from the hem of my skirt to bind them. Using another scrap of cloth, I cleaned off the woman’s dark face gently, wishing she’d wake while simultaneously hoping she wouldn’t. 

While she was unconscious, maybe she didn’t feel pain. I grimaced at her many injuries, knowing that pain would inescapable if she were to recover from this.

We stayed the night on that speck of an island, neglecting a fire and keeping vigil while our dragons slept on the wider rock outcroppings, regaining their strength, snoring soundly beneath the southern moon as only giant lizards can. 

The woman we watched over woke once in the night, groaning in sharp pain and utterly confused, wondering where she was, wondering who we were.

“Who…are you?” she managed those few words with great effort. Her jaw was bruised and lip split in multiple places, making it difficult to speak. 

“Friends,” I answered, keeping my voice calm and my touch soothing. I murmured, “Just friends. I’m Jeorgianna Mormont and this is my brother, Aemon.”

She blinked, as she couldn’t nod. Her face was contorted with pain, growing fiercer as she struggled to stay awake. Still, she croaked out, very faintly, “Miss…andei.”

_Missandei._ Her name.

But then she tumbled back into the realms of unconsciousness again, as the pain racking her entire body wouldn’t allow her to stay awake for very long.

She needed better tending. She needed a soft bed and to be out of the elements. The longer those wounds were left with only my patched up ministrations, the chance of infection was high. Black flies and biting gnats were drawn to the scent of blood and bothered us through the night, with Aemon and I swatting and brushing them away for hours. All while those storms continued to rage in the distance.

Aemon scrounged around the tiny island and found us some berries and roots to nibble on, though we spent the night hungry and anxious, the adrenaline from the rescue finally wearing off towards dawn, when the weather to the east, gods be good, finally turned and looked near to clearing. 

We flew with the sunrise.

Missandei rode with me this time, as Dark Sister was used to the extra weight of a second rider and could bear it longer than Bearfyre. Missandei was still breathing, but would not wake. 

I pushed Dark Sister to go faster. She balked at the insistence, having worn herself out much the same the day before. But she kept a steady pace anyway, seeming to understand that I was begging. With the coast on our left side, we flew straight east, taking few precautions on the trip back, not caring who might catch a glimpse of us flying overhead. 

They’d seen the dragons in Qarth, they’d seen the dragons in Astapor. There would be no hiding them after this. 

When I finally saw the high, familiar cliffs of the narrow Jade Gates come into view, I nearly cried out in relief, although it was evening by that time and Missandei was much worse. I pushed Dark Sister to greet those final miles with haste.

_Home. Take us home._

We landed in the front yard, rumbling the ground beneath the dragons’ heavy landing.

As she descended, Dark Sister gave out a heralding screech, which brought Mama and Papa from the villa, with Grandfather and Daenielle following close behind. We never brought the dragons to the house. Never. We always walked up from the bay. So they ran out to meet us, confused and anxious, a host of questions primed on their lips.

But at the sight of our passenger and the grim state she was in, the questions would wait. 

With few words, Papa helped me get Missandei down from Dark Sister, bringing her to softer ground. Aemon and I both disembarked from the dragons, with Aemon giving Dark Sister and Bearfyre commands to go and rejoin Seadancer in the bay. 

We hovered over Missandei, with Mama and Papa on either side, both examining her injuries quickly—Papa with a grim look on his face, Mama with wide eyes. The swelling was worse than before and the tight collar around Missandei’s throat was making it hard for her to breathe. I’d attempted to twist the thing off while we were still in the air, but my hands didn’t have the strength to remove it.

But my father’s hands were stronger and he always knew what to do. 

Mama too, who was staring at the most obvious mark of slavery in this country and shaking her head with a natural repulsion that ran deep. With fire in her voice, she said, “Jorah, take that collar off her neck.”

The collar broke in two places as my father tore it from Missandei’s throat.


	16. Breaking Chains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Jade Sea heals all wounds. It is known <3
> 
> That said, watch out for smol!Dany feels in this chapter- especially when you get to salzrand's beautiful/devastating drawing for this chapter :'(

**_Daenerys_ **

Jeorgianna and Aemon told us everything—how the storms had come up too fast, how they’d been forced to outrun them, flying off course and finding themselves at the very edge of a foreign city, seeing that woman nearly beaten to death and then descending to stop the men who did it. The altercation that followed, the slave soldier who begged them to get the injured woman to safety—away from all that fire and all that blood. 

_Fire and blood._

They didn’t try to justify anything. They were contrite but I don’t think they would think twice about doing it all again. My children have never been able to stand aside when they see someone else in pain.

I watched Jorah’s hand drift up to his hair, and his jaw was set, a sure sign that the news was disconcerting to him. He opened his mouth to speak once, but thought better of it, knowing his children well enough to know that whatever he might say, they would have said to themselves already, ten times over.

_There’s no keeping the dragons secret after this…_

But didn’t he tell me it was a question of “when” rather than “if”? The dangers were unavoidable from the very day those eggs hatched, when Jeorgianna and Aemon came running up the beach with baby dragons in their arms. 

And honestly, I didn’t care. 

I didn’t care if the world might now know that dragons lived and breathed in the East. I didn’t care if my children had set fire to the docks in Astapor, nor even a few of the vile masters that lived there. 

I was just glad to have them home again, their physical presence granting me the peace I’d been denied all night, as the storm battering the coast had been no greater than the one battering away at my heart. 

With fear, the kind I felt in Westeros, when we rode away from Castle Black in that wagon, leaving Jorah behind, perhaps forever. With dread, the kind I felt in the Red Waste, when I heard dead silence in the desert night and knew my first child would never utter a single cry.

But these were false feelings, and my children had returned to me. 

I gathered Jeorgianna and Aemon up in my arms tightly, or rather, they gathered me up. When did they grow so tall? So brave, so kind, so _good_. I would _never_ give them my blessing on what they had done—it was a reckless, foolish, dangerous, _wonderful_ thing that they’d done—but as I hugged them to my chest, my heart was filled-to-bursting with joy…and pride.

That these children had somehow come into this world through me, by the love I shared with their father. 

_They take after you in so many ways…_ I thought with tender love flooding through me, as I watched Jorah take his turn at embracing the children. 

The glance he shared with Jeorgianna said he thought she’d made the right decision and I saw her relax at his approval, letting out the tense breath she’d been holding since they told us what happened. As he pulled Aemon in for a hug, Jorah pressed a quick kiss against our son’s curly-haired head. Aemon was almost too old for his father’s kisses. _Almost_. But Jorah was too happy to have them both back and Aemon was too exhausted to shy away, accepting the uncommon gesture of affection with a look of relief written up and down his young face, pressing his cheek tightly against his father’s chest. 

I told them both to go get some sleep, as Jeorgianna and Aemon looked like they might topple over, having flown what should have been a full day’s journey in just under twelve hours’ time.

As for the woman they brought with them—after we’d taken that collar from her neck, I had Jorah carry her into the villa, laying her down on a long couch in the sunroom, gently. We tended her carefully, washing her bloodied and battered body and changing Jeorgianna’s makeshift bindings for fresh ones. 

I sent Jorah to bed soon after the children, as I didn’t want his cold returning, and sat up by that woman’s bedside during the night, too worried for the children’s sake that she might slip away if no one was beside her. But as I kept vigil, I began to wonder about this woman, for her own sake. Who she was and what her story might be.

_Missandei_ , Jeorgianna had told me her name. 

She looked a little younger than me, but not by much. I took her bandaged hand in my own, thinking maybe the touch of someone else might give her strength. The skin of her palm was soft, without callouses. She wasn’t a laborer, nor, I would guess, a pleasure-house slave. Not because she wasn’t pretty enough—she was lovely. I could tell, even beneath the bruises, her face was fair, her skin was a rich shade and that mess of hair was wiry and lively.

There was an ink stain on one of her fingers, a little black splattering against the brown. A slave that could read and write? It was an unusual thing but…Jeorgianna said those men were dragging her down to a place where slaves were nailed to crosses.

“The Walk of Punishment in Astapor,” Jorah had confirmed it, grimly. He’d never seen it himself but he knew it by reputation—a place of death and torture, a warning to those who traversed the Red City, showing to all what the good masters of Astapor did to slaves who defied the natural order, for offenses both great and small.

“I’m glad you defied them,” I whispered to the woman lying unconscious in my house. I pressed her palm in my hand slightly, although I doubt she felt it. I knew nothing about her but that she had defied her masters. And if I only knew this, I would have liked her for that reason alone. 

Slavery was an ugly, ugly stain that would likely never wash out of the world. It infected most of the Free Cities and spilled out, even across the sea. Slaver’s Bay was the worst of them all, having no shame about the human trade they built their cities upon, selling and buying children from the Dothraki and pirate-slavers who raided the islands of the Summer Sea. It was a fact of life and had been, for centuries before I was born.

But it unsettled me, turning my stomach to rot and my heart to flames.

There was a reason for this. One I’d shared with Jorah some years ago, as he knew my feelings on the subject ran deep and wondered about them. His own feelings on slavery were so tied to his deepest regrets and darkest shame that he didn’t believe he deserved an opinion. 

Much less redemption. Even to this day. 

“What would have happened to the poachers on Bear Island if you hadn’t sold them to slavers?” I asked him once, knowing the answer, knowing that it didn’t matter. Not to my husband. 

“They would have lost their right hands,” he answered with truth, but sighed too, knowing why I asked. “Or been executed. It depends on the manner of the theft and what was stolen.”

Northern justice had its own levels of harshness.

“Then perhaps they were better…,” I began, thinking to make _any_ argument for him, as I loved him dearly and I didn’t want him to be tortured by the past, no matter what he’d done, no matter my own feelings.

“Don’t…,” he replied before I could finish, his tone kind and gentle, as always. But his smile didn’t reach his eyes as he shook his head and laid his hand over mine, to stop me from finishing that thought. 

He was unwilling to have me make excuses or try to justify his prior sins. I obeyed his request, but only because in this, he was redeemed—even if he never realized it.

“But you, Daenerys…,” Jorah changed the subject, unsure of how to ask the question that sprang to his mind, one he’d wondered about for some time.

“You’re wondering why I hate slavery so much?” I guessed and he nodded, curious. 

I was born on Dragonstone, but I grew up in the Free Cities where slavery was commonplace. Slave collars, manacles, auction blocks and greasy masters—the old custom infests every city in the east except Braavos, with those closer to Slaver’s Bay more brazen and defiant about their ancient tradition of allowing one human to own another. In Pentos, they wish to appear more genteel, and so their slaves are referred to as “servants,” even though they receive no wages and cannot take a step beyond their master’s gate without a command.

But I should have been used to it. I should have accepted it as a way of life. It wasn’t as if my family had claims to being liberators. We were conquerors, at best. Tyrants, at worst. My ancestors had enslaved the _entire_ western continent with the threat of dragonfire. And I’m sure, given the choice and the money, Viserys would have filled his grand palace with hundreds of slaves, east or west, wherever he found his golden crown.

My stomach turned again on the thought. Because I knew how Viserys would treat his slaves. How he would treat those that he owned.

Because I knew how he treated me.

In Braavos, Viserys told me to wait for him. I was five years old, in the middle of a filthy street in the cheap districts, down near the wet market, where the air smelled of butcher’s meat and sang with the buzzing of black flies. I was wearing a kerchief over my hair and holding a rag doll to my breast, the last thing old Willem Darry gave me before he died. Viserys snatched my doll away and told me to stay. 

He seethed the words, “Don’t you dare move an inch, Dany. I’ll be back.”

And then he left, to find money or meet with friends or I don’t know what. But I stayed, just as he commanded. Because when he spoke in that voice, I dared not refuse. Even after I watched him throw my doll away in a stinking bin of discarded fish heads and eyes, not even attempting to sell it for a copper which might have bought us bread. 

“Worthless,” he muttered as he walked away.

I think back to that day and I wonder if he meant to leave me there, hoping I’d either wander off or be stolen away—a lost, little girl in the middle of a city street. Ser Willem had died only a fortnight past and we’d been turned out of the house in Braavos, the one with the red door and those lemon trees. We had no money and it would have been easier for my brother to find his own way, without a tag-along. 

If he hadn’t come back, I’m not sure what would have happened. Maybe one of the merchants in the street would have taken pity on an orphan girl and given me some bread and water and let me work in their stand. Maybe I would have slept on a door post until someone found me, huddled in a corner, starved to death, my lifeless body being nibbled on by rats and those buzzing black flies.

But Viserys must have thought twice. He came back at the end of evening, seizing my hand roughly and leading me to a dark alleyway and cramped lodgings where we spent two nights before moving on to other alleyways and lodgings that were all the same. My brother would creep into my bed some nights and slither up next to me, not bothering to see if I was awake before he started hissing at my ear.

“You owe me, Dany. Never forget it. And I will sell your pretty hair and trade it for a golden crown. I will trade your violet eyes for our father’s throne. I will barter you off piece by piece, if that’s what it takes. But rejoice in this, little sister. For through you, our family will be restored to its former glory…” 

The lies began so early that I never learned how to contradict them. 

Viserys kept me sequestered and he didn’t allow me to talk to anyone else. When his friends came to visit us, grasping, puffed-up men from all around the world, I was told to put on my best dress, turn slowly in their presence, keep my eyes down and my mouth shut. I was not allowed to ask questions of any kind, as Viserys was quick to remind me with a backhanded slap across my cheek that sometimes drew blood.

A dragon is not a slave. _Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor._ But I had been one for a long time, even though my collar and chains were invisible things, even though the bruises and scratches on my face and arms were _not_. And the bruises on my heart?

I try to forgive Viserys sometimes. He grew up without a mother too. But he was my brother. I know it’s not written in stone anywhere that brothers need to love their sisters. But he wasn’t just my brother, he was my only family, the only family I’d ever known. And he made me think that family meant something terrible and frightening, a connection built from fear. I might have gone through my whole life thinking that…

…if not for a man with kind blue eyes, who managed to answer my first question to him without striking my face or telling me to avert my eyes.

_Are you from my country?_

_Ser Jorah Mormont, of Bear Island…_

I must have fallen asleep, for I woke in the night to rustling, my head having slipped down to lay beside the hand that still held Missandei’s loosely. I blinked awake, eyes adjusting to the darkness, as the candles had gone out, burned to waxy stubs. For a moment, I wondered where I was, as it was disorientating to wake without Jorah beside me, safe in our bed upstairs.

“Please…,” I heard a soft voice entreat me and remembered it all. 

Missandei was awake. My hand slipped from hers, but only to rise and light a new candle. I brought it near us, rejoining her soon enough, sliding back into my seat and taking up that bandaged hand once more. Her lips were dry.

“Can you take some water?” I asked her, and she gave the slightest nod. I helped her sit up and lean forward to sip at the cup I brought to her lips. She managed to drink half of it. But the effort was taxing and I saw tears running down her cheeks, as any movement must bring her terrible pain. She bore it bravely but my heart ripped open for this woman.

As she lay back on the pillows and cushions, I heard her mutter, with bitterness, “ _Valar Morghulis_.”

“Yes, all men must die,” I replied softly, while taking the cup away, then reaching out to stroke her forehead as if she were a child. 

Perhaps she didn’t want my touch, as I was a stranger to her, but she was too weak to pull away from me in any case. She watched me, but I saw her face fall at my words, hearing me repeat her words back at her in the common tongue. Her breath evened out and her eyes closed again, this time in resignation. 

But I added softly, with steady defiance of my own, “But you’re not a man, Missandei. And you’re not going to die.”

Her brown eyes snapped open. A spark of something fiery reflected in those sad eyes. And, in that moment, I knew the words I spoke were truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #BurnInHellViserys


	17. Dawn's Pale Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So late update today. But look at me, still hitting the weekly update mark :) I don't want to jinx myself but I definitely think this is the longest I've gone without skipping a week.
> 
> Extra cake/congrats to _Dr._ Salzrand this week!! :) 
> 
> *said in Grandpa Jeor style* YOU ROCK (and not just for the gorgeous artwork in this chapter) <3 <3 <3

**_Ser Barristan_ **

The day of the storms, Arthur and I were on our way to Qarth, and shared refuge with a shepherd and his small flock in a set of craggy rock caves along the winding road from Port Yhos to its more famous sister city. 

The loud crashes of thunder spooked the flock, and Arthur scooped up one of the shepherd’s wandering lambs on our way in. Arthur held the shivering animal safe under his arm, its little legs hooked over his forearm, as we stood by the mouth of that cave and watched the storms split the sky open with a force that I’d never seen before.

The storm that hit Dragonstone forty years ago might have rivaled it—the night the Mad King’s fleet was splintered into kindling, the night his youngest daughter was born. But I was in the capital that night, not Dragonstone, and my memory isn’t what it used to be, so I cannot make the comparison with any certainty. 

Storms, wars, battles, and kings. In the end, it all fades. It goes grey and starts to snag at the edges, fraying and tangling back together. The tapestry starts to unravel, even as individual threads grow stronger, holding tight until the last.

Like the one dyed in lilac that is sewn around my heart. 

Or all the black ones, those that resemble the smoky sheen of a black kitten’s coat, the one that mewled in a basket in the long corridors of the Red Keep, where little Rhaenys Targaryen would skip over and pick that kitten up into her grasp to comfort its cries. 

Seeing Arthur hold that lamb over his arm, I blinked once under a flash of lightning, seeing an image of Rhaenys Targaryen instead, just briefly, with her little kitten slung over her arm in much the same manner. 

In the days before the Rebellion, Rhaenys used to play with her kitten in those sun-lit corridors daily. Sometimes by herself, but more often with Ashara nearby, as Rhaegar took little interest in his children and Elia was too unwell to tend them, even if she wanted to. There were servants and wet-nurses aplenty in King’s Landing, but Aerys had poisoned his entire household against grandchildren that he barely acknowledged, so their care was minimal and performed without love attached to the duty.

 _She smells Dornish._ These were the Mad King’s only words for his only granddaughter. I don’t know that he spared any words at all on his grandson, as he was out of his mind by the time Aegon was born. 

Perhaps if Rhaegar had stayed closer to home, things would have been different. I don’t know. But I do know Elia never really recovered from the birth of her daughter. And her son nearly finished her. Her health faltered and her beauty was hollowed out by sickness that she couldn’t shake. Too soon, little was left of the lively, sun-kissed princess who had arrived in the capital only four years prior.

If she’d been a flower, she was wilting. And Rhaegar seemed impatient to throw her out.

But Ashara loved Elia like a sister. And she worried over her desperately. I could see it in her pained expression when the maester announced that Elia was with child that second time. I knew it in the way Ashara cared for her friend, staying in King’s Landing while Elia was bedridden instead of returning home to Starfall, making her laugh, making her smile, all the while hiding the rumors of Rhaegar’s philandering from her ears, those rumors that grew stronger with each passing month. 

Rhaenys plucked her kitten out of a wicker basket to hand it over to Ashara’s lap. The young woman knelt near the child, both of them bathed in the white sunlight of a spring morning, spilling through decorative, stained glass lining the king’s gilded hallways. Ashara took the kitten willingly, her hands stroking its fur gently while she patiently listened to the chatterings of the three-year-old. 

I watched them together, as I approached down the long hallway, coming from the king’s personal chambers to deliver another summons to his unhappy queen. Rhaella felt the brunt of her husband’s madness far earlier than the rest of us.

“Will Balerion grow wings, Ashara?” Rhaenys asked the woman beside her. 

She’d named her cat after the most fearsome dragon in history, but the name was a lark. There was no fierceness in that tiny creature. Just little claws and little teeth and a rose-pink tongue that licked milk from a shallow bowl. It was sweet-natured and soft-furred and purred under the hands of anyone who scratched the little patch of black fur between its velvet ears. Ashara’s fingers found that spot of fur as I walked closer, slowing my steps.

“Aren’t you afraid if he grows wings, he’ll fly away from us?” Ashara wondered, amusement hinting at the corners of her comely mouth. But there was wisdom in what she said too. And a faint shade of old sadness. Always sadness. Ashara had lost her mother and father early. It made her wise for her years. But melancholy too.

“If he flies away, he’ll come back,” Rhaenys argued, with the sureness of a child who loved her little pet more than anything else in the world.

Ashara heard my footsteps in the hallway and looked up from the kitten in her lap, meeting my gaze warmly, with a sweet flavor of recognition. Soft eyes, soft gaze—from the very first time I saw her, standing beside Elia, serving as witness on that poor woman’s wedding day. 

The bemused smile on Ashara’s lips lingered, as did her shared glance with me. She took her time with her answer, mulling it over. 

In the meantime, Rhaenys knelt down beside Ashara, pinning her colorful skirt to the stone floor, with both hands reaching out to pet her kitten, her tiny fingers itching under the cat’s chin. I think Ashara meant to correct Rhaenys, and let the little girl know that not everyone who goes away comes back again. 

Ashara Dayne knew this better than anyone in the Red Keep. But perhaps she didn’t want to say it. Perhaps she thought the worst was behind her. For what could be worse than losing a mother before her time? 

My heart breaks on our innocence. All of us. None of us knew what was coming. None of us knew how life would continue to take and take, until there was nothing left. How could we?

“Oh, maybe he will,” Ashara conceded, in nearly a cheerful tone, unwilling to douse the little girl’s dreams. Or her own, for that matter. Her lilac-colored eyes finally slipped from mine, the smile deepening as she passed the cat back into to the little girl’s arms. She rested her hands in her now empty lap, saying, “But a cat with wings? Wouldn’t that be a marvelous sight?”

The little girl nodded brightly at the strange, wonderous idea, finally looking up from her cat and catching sight of me.

“Ser Barristan!” Rhaenys scrambled up from her knees, running to my side with her little kitten in tow, lifting it up high so that I could have a chance to pet its smoky, black fur as well. 

Ashara’s eyes danced as I bent down to satisfy the little girl. With a long-standing fondness in my tone, I asked little Rhaenys, “And what do we have here, princess?”

I live in the past so often these days. I find the old memories burn brighter than the more recent ones, shining out like copper pennies in a water fountain.

In Essos, sheets of rain continued falling on the countryside. But the newborn lamb in Arthur’s arms no longer shivered, having calmed under my nephew’s steady hold, even as growling thunder rumbled around us. Arthur had a reassuring way with all manner of creatures, great and small. He was born with it, I think. He stroked the lamb’s chin absently as he watched the storm, his Selmy eyes flickering with muted curiosity.

I wondered if the memories of this trip would linger with Arthur, as my memories have lingered with me. It was likely. He’d seen such sights already. The kind that stick with you until the end. 

My gods, he’d seen a dragon in the flesh, which was more than the rest of us could say. Although I had a feeling it was the girl beside the dragon that he’d remember longest. 

He didn’t say anything to me about it but there was a distinct softness in my nephew’s tone when he related what had happened on the forest path, where he’d followed Ser Jorah Mormont and his daughter through salt marshes and twilight. How he’d been greeted with a sword at his throat, how he’d seen a dragon, its leathery wings unfurled and its teeth bared. How the daughter had subdued the creature with a few choice words and how he’d shared a meal by their campfire afterwards. He said all this with the appropriate wonder in his voice.

But his tone went soft on the daughter’s name. _Jeorgianna Mormont…_

It was subtle but I heard it. I wonder if Arthur recognized it himself. He said nothing concrete, keeping his thoughts to himself, as was his way.

Ah, youth. 

“You like this girl?” On the road earlier, I’d asked him the blunt question. I was amused by the idea, I suppose. Arthur was a handsome young man but always seemed so ambivalent to the girls at home and their not-so-subtle interest, choosing books over the company of a maid more often than not. His father gave up on his youngest son long ago, at least where a prudent match was concerned, which is likely why he had no qualms with Arthur joining me on this foolhardy quest.

But I was beginning to understand his father’s exasperation. Love, _truly_ , was wasted on the young.

“I don’t know her, Uncle,” my nephew reminded me flatly, avoiding the question. He added, as an excuse, “And she’s very young.”

“But already a beauty, yes? They say she takes after her mother and I’ve never heard the Targaryens described as plain,” I mentioned evenly, my eyebrows rising just slightly.

Arthur only shrugged, unwilling to commit to any firm opinion on the subject. Not to me. Nor to anyone else, I imagine. He kept his feelings close, as always. But I watched his mouth soften at the mere memory. We had walked a few steps on when he mused, with a little wonder, a little more admiration, “She stood before a dragon the size of a house and didn’t flinch. Not for a moment…”

My nephew said no more and I decided not to press him. He likely wouldn’t see the Mormont girl again anyway. She would be a cherished memory of his youth, bright and shiny as my own, those that he might hold and flip through his fingers when he was an old man, thinking on it, bemoaning missed chances and the cruel twists of fate.

I’d slept little the last few days. We were coming to our journey’s end and I was afraid of it. The tiger merchant in Port Yhos had little information for me, save the name of a red priestess in a lacquered mask who was known to tell true fortunes and had a sharp memory for Westerosi names and histories.

Some claimed she spent time on the Western continent when she was young.

 _Quaithe._ It was a distinctly Eastern name, vague and strange as any other. It meant nothing to me.

The tiger merchant said I would find her in a courtyard in Qarth, up a long, winding staircase of limestone steps, marked only for the number of white roses that grew by her front gate. That’s all he could tell me, together with a warning to watch myself with her, as shadow binders were dangerous, even thousands of miles west of Asshai.

I’d take my chances.

“The gods must be angry,” the shepherd muttered at the violent weather, speaking the common tongue with a heavy Qarthian accent. He kept his crook raised at his side, keeping his sheep from bolting through the mouth of that cave.

“Aren’t they always?” I muttered back, swallowing back a sigh. 

At yet…were the gods ever really angry? Or only heedless to our suffering? I worried it was the latter, which was somehow worse. For angry or not, what kind of gods would allow the butcher of a child who only wanted to play with her kitten in the halls of her father?

What kind of gods would allow grief to consume a kind, gentle woman who had only wanted to save those she loved from further pain? I’d die with these questions unanswered. I’d made my peace with that.

Or so I thought…

The storms passed, inevitably, with dawn breaking over the dripping eaves of that cave. The shepherd ushered his flock home, waving his leave as he left the road and climbed up into the hill country. Arthur and I waved back, continuing the last few miles to Qarth in mostly silence.

* * *

We wandered through a tattered city, cluttered with rubbish, splinters and flooded debris. 

There was a hush over the streets, as the city slowly woke to assess the damage done in the night and the day before. The storms hit Qarth harder than anywhere else in Essos and the rebuilding would take months. And yet, the residents were already at work when we arrived, slow but steady, digging out rubble, cleaning their streets and tending their injured.

Arthur stopped to help a merchant turn his cart right-side up and then he stopped again, to calm a frantic woman looking for her missing child. I wandered further on, too compelled to finish this journey once and for all. While we waited for that storm to pass, I’d decided this was the end, no matter what the woman in the lacquered mask had to say. 

Those limestone steps that the tiger merchant had talked about—I found them soon enough, rose petals limp by the gate, most shredded by hail and scattered in the street. I found myself climbing those steps, neglecting to wait for my nephew. If the end of this road led to nothing but ashes and dust, I’d rather discover it for myself.

Defeat and disappointment need no company. 

I managed those steps quickly, with a more youthful energy than I’d been able to manage in some time, as if passing that gate removed twenty years. Maybe it did? The very air of the mage woman’s house was tinged with simmering magic. 

Or maybe it was just plain eagerness. I was eager to be done with this, my _heart_ was eager, having had its fill of an old man’s folly, clinging to slim, last chances with a fool’s hope. But the hope was nearly extinguished. If this woman couldn’t tell me what happened to Ashara, I had a feeling there would be no more rumors or ghosts to chase. 

I approached a dead end. And I had a feeling I was running low on the strength to face it.

When I reached the upper courtyard, I found a woman dressed in her morning robes, with long, black hair down around her shoulders, held back in a simple style. She was on her hands and knees, diligently cleaning away branches, brambles and broken ceramic from a bed of white starflowers. 

The entire courtyard was a mess, with toppled stone and wrecked gardens, but it was the starflowers that she was intent on, ignoring the rest.

She wore no lacquered mask, nor red fabric, and so I mistook her for a maidservant, rising early to face the ruins of the prior day, as her mistress still lounged in the house. I wouldn’t have touched her otherwise. She didn’t hear me approach, too focused on her work. The industry of her hands was nearly manic, and didn’t match the stoicism in her features. 

I wondered briefly why she _needed_ to clear those flower beds first, when there was so much else to do. 

When she straightened up, she retrieved a clay jar from the earth, lying among the bent and rain-battered flower beds. The jar had rolled across the courtyard by the force of storms winds, but miraculously remained in one piece. She brushed dirt from her dress with her free hand, sighing at the insurmountable mess surrounding her. But her face was still turned away from me, distracted, so I reached forward and gently slid my fingers around that woman’s wrist to gain her attention.

She turned immediately, eyes finding mine, and the words I’d planned to say died on my lips. They _died._

My fingers remained, unable to pull away. My grip tightened, seeking reality. Unsure, unwilling to let myself believe…

 _Violet_ eyes stared back at me, the pale color of spring lilacs.

 _Her_ eyes stared back at me.

Later, she would tell me it was impossible. There was no way I would be able to see past the illusion that she’d been weaving around herself for forty years. The magic was too strong, too set in its ways. She’d grown lax in keeping up a glamour that was no longer needed, sometimes betraying age lines and a few white strands in the raven’s black, as flickering shadows. But she insists her eyes had been dyed with a more lasting effect that not even she could see through. 

It must have been a trick of dawn’s pale light that turned her false brown eyes back to lilac. Or a trick in my own head, upon unexpectedly seeing the same features that had haunted me without ceasing for forty years, nearly unchanged in all that time.

As if our eyes were meeting in the halls of the Red Keep on a day long since passed.

But there was no trick in the feel of my fingers touching her bare skin. With a single touch, I’d undone something that I didn’t know needed undoing. Had I known the trouble she’d gone through to carve out those memories that came rushing back to her in that moment, maybe I’d have kept my hand back.

Or maybe not. 

I hadn’t touched her in so, so long. My eyes hadn’t beheld her. My ears had not heard her voice. My fingers _ached_ as they curled around the same wrist they’d held last in Harrenhal. At a dance, the image of which beamed out of the fountain of my dearest memories, pulsing brighter than all the rest combined.

Her head resting against my chest. Her hand enveloped in mine.

 _Ashara Dayne is long dead_ …my mind sputtered, my eyes doubted.

“Ashara…,” I breathed her name, startled by the sound of it. And I watched her features blanch at her name, and blanch further in sudden, undeniable recognition.

“Barristan?” she answered, the former stoicism in her features unraveling. 

She dropped the clay jar in her hand in shock, in disbelief. The resilient jar had survived raging storms, only to shatter into pieces at our feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so ya know, I've cast James Norton as Arthur Selmy in my head. Mostly because he has soulful eyes <3 Don't read into that for his chances with Jeorgianna or anything ;)
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Okay, I'm gonna go cry about Rhaenys Targaryen and her kitten umm...forever #MyHeartIsBroken


	18. The Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And continuing the Bashara feels in this chapter <3 
> 
> My inbox was _nuked_ by Fluff & Feels this week, as salzrand not only randomly set off our newest obsession with #TheHairBraidingThatWasPromised (more on this topic in a moment)...but she also drew THE. DANCE. <3 <3 <3
> 
> Look, in _all_ the history of Westeros, there's only one dance I care about. And it's this one. Between a white knight and a girl with laughing purple eyes who deserved so. much. better. #MyHeartIsFull
> 
> Next update, we'll return to Missandei and the Mormont-Targaryens :)

**_Ashara_ **

_Barristan Selmy._

_Barristan Selmy, Barristan Selmy, Barristan Selmy…_

I…

His name fell off my lips like a long-forgotten prayer; his eyes were locked with mine. Both of us stunned silent, as the spinning wheel of time came to an abrupt and spontaneous stop, as if the spinner grabbed her wheel roughly, rising from her stool to gawk.

At us. 

_Lady Ashara Dayne of Starfall and Ser Barristan Selmy of Harvest Hall._

I remember they announced our names together once, at a state dinner for the Tyrells, as I arrived at the entrance to the feast hall at the exact moment Ser Barristan did and the herald decided to save time by naming us both together.

It was an innocent thing, but I liked the way our names sounded together. Perhaps he did too? We shared a warm smile and I took the knight’s offered arm as we entered the room, breaking apart at the foot of the king’s table, as I took my customary seat beside Elia and he went to his usual place, at arms, standing guard behind Aerys.

I spent years in this man’s company. I knew his face so well. I knew his voice and the color of his eyes without looking. 

But only a moment before, I would not have been able to recall any of it. His name would have hit my ear like a stranger’s.

It was the mere touch of his fingers that undid the spell. And it worked with immediate effect. 

Two of my three lost memories came back at once—that day with Rhaenys, my eyes turning soft as I watched a strong and battle-tested knight bend down to humor a child by petting her kitten’s black fur. 

And that night at Harrenhal, where I danced in his arms.

I’d traded both away, in full, and the memories took _him_ with the forgetting. His name, his face, the way he looked at me, the way he scanned the crowd, his eyes meeting mine across a torn up tourney field, dire and serious and _grave_ as we both watched Rhaegar Targaryen lay a wreath of blue roses in Lyanna Stark’s lap. 

Both helpless to stop the world from spinning forward over those roses’ cruel thorns.

The memory merchant in Asshai had tricked me and used me false. I’d been willing to part with those two memories, I _needed_ to dig them out—but they’d been chained and linked to a hundred more. All taken from me as I pled with the trader in desperation, palms raised and tears in my eyes, “Take his name out of my head.”

The magic was binding, but the antidote was easy. As Barristan’s fingers curled around my wrist, it all came back in a rush.

_Ser Barristan…_

_My lady…_

If I closed my eyes, I could see him dueling with my brother in the sparring grounds at King’s Landing. They were the best swordsmen in the Seven Kingdoms, always equally matched so long as my brother set _Dawn_ aside. And I could see myself cross paths with him in the corridors of the Red Keep daily—in that gleaming silver armor and white cloak. His head would dip with respect, hiding the depths of affection in his eyes with a simple, “Lady Ashara” passing his lips.

An affection less hidden on the night we danced. That night, that dance…

The memory, lost for so long, flooded my senses like a rogue wave. All the little details that had been snipped away with such glee by the memory merchant in Asshai grew back at once, wildly, filling my head with colorful blooms, and my heart with a haunting ache.

_Bones chilled by a false spring. White roses turned blue with frost…_

Harrenhal played host to the great houses of Westeros that year, as Lord Whent’s tournament would be the greatest our generation ever saw. The last too, although we didn’t know it then.

At the banquet on the first night, music from the harps and citterns turned delicate and slow, on a wistful melody that filled the grand hall to its rafters. It was the last dance of the night, as the celebration was winding down, with the lords and ladies leaving the Hall of a Hundred Hearths to either sleep off the haze of ale and wine or continue their drunken merriment elsewhere, in less conspicuous corners of the old castle.

I should have gone upstairs hours before—Elia had left the feast early, feeling unwell—but she begged me to stay, as the night was young and so was I. She said she’d be fine and reminded me that I was no nursemaid.

_Enjoy it for both of us._

The night was lively. The air was sweet on the scent of spring. I danced with Oberyn thrice, as Elia’s brother and I had been dancing with each other since we were children, and his lithe arms could spin me with relish, and spin a grin on my face too, after only a few, wild steps. My eyes danced, with mirth and laughter.

I danced with Jon Connington, Ned Stark and his wolfish brother too, Brandon, who whispered crass, ale-laced musings in my ear, which I received with no offense. I found my spirits soaring high and impossible to douse, even by a young northern lord’s clumsy attempts to seduce me, or procure me for his brother? 

I honestly don’t know what Brandon’s aim was, as he seemed to change his mind every verse. 

_Ashara, dance with my little brother, won’t you?_

_Ashara, kiss me blind…_

I laughed merrily and pushed the tall Stark boy away, falling into the arms of my next dance partner smoothly. The music banished my usual sadness to distant lands and I danced for _hours_ , with anyone who asked me, neglecting my wine glass, drunk instead on dancing and the mood of that raucous hall itself. 

I wasn’t the only one in high spirits. As the crescent moon rose over starlit fields outside, my brother convinced Rhaegar to sing a song for us all. The tipsy dragon-prince hopped up on a cask of wine to sing out over the heads of the gathered crowd. The lyre purred on familiar notes as Rhaegar’s voice sunk into the tender verses of a love song. 

His song moved Lyanna Stark to tears, much to her youngest brother’s amusement. Lyanna blushed scarlet when found out but recovered quickly, spilling a full glass of red wine over Benjen’s chuckling head. 

We all applauded and hollered our approval, both for Rhaegar’s sweet song and the Stark girl’s antics, blind to a connection that would bring us all to ruin.

But not that night.

That night, it was all laughter and joy and drink and dancing. I felt my age, scarcely twenty years and a day, youthful, vibrant, and in love with _life_ , for the first time in as long as I could remember. 

“Ashara?” a man’s gentle voice entreated me, as I retrieved my shawl from where I’d discarded it earlier in the night. 

There were shoes and cloaks and even the odd coin purse lying around the feast hall, to be collected by their owners in the morning, if Lord Whent’s servants didn’t pick over the drunken spoils of their master’s fine hall first. 

“Yes?” I turned to find Ser Barristan standing near me. The din of voices surrounding us grew fainter, as half the guests were wandering off, the musicians tuning their instruments for one last song to play us all out.

The brilliant shine of the evening had begun to wear off, as midnight was two hours gone and dawn approached, swift as always. The night couldn’t last forever, no matter how much I might wish it to linger. Still, I held onto it for as long as I could, and my smile still reached my eyes as I took a step towards Ser Barristan Selmy, at ease in his presence. He was my undisputed favorite of Aerys’s Kingsguard, save my own brother. 

_Did I ever tell you that?_

Barristan’s blue eyes were bright and clear, not glassy as Brandon’s had been, nor shy like Ned’s, fumbling over my name as he asked for my hand in the dance. Nor were they tinged with brotherly, if ever passionate affection, as only Oberyn could manage. Or platonic regard for feminine beauty, as Jon Connington seemed to prefer.

“Would you dance with me?” he wondered. His voice held hope, but no expectation. If I declined, he’d bow his head in a courtly manner and wish me a goodnight. 

And what’s more, he’d mean it too. 

“Of course I will,” I replied, my smile deepening at the steady hand he offered me. I took it, leaving the poor shawl behind once again, discarded on a bench in Lord Whent’s halls, for good this time. 

I was glad he finally asked. I’d attempted to catch his gaze twice earlier in the night, but to no avail, as he was otherwise engaged with the lords of Westeros and had no time to grant a young woman the pleasure of a dance. Even if she found herself impatient for him to ask.

But even the long wait had not dampened my spirits, as somehow, I’d convinced myself that the night would last forever and eventually, I _knew_ he’d ask. 

My heart had been skipping on the certainty all night, even while dancing in the arms of other men.

How did I know he’d ask? I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the power I had to glimpse the future. Not back then. Not for many years after. The next day, I told Elia it was a feeling, no more than that.

He waited until the very last song, but he asked me. And he led me back to the dance floor, where only a handful of couples remained, all swaying slowly to a pretty, sad song that really had no place at a feast of celebration. 

_High in the hills of the kings who are gone…_

But it was after midnight and the wistfulness of the melody matched the hour, so I didn’t begrudge the musicians their choice. 

Was it the song or was it Barristan himself? His strong arm slid around my waist, splaying against the small of my back and I found my fingers interlacing with his, before letting him cradle my fingers, bringing our joined hands to rest at his heart. And there they stayed for a long time, my other hand perched low on his shoulder, resting at his arm as we danced close, our cheeks brushing now and again.

I shouldn’t have been so happy. I lived in the halls of a mad king, whose whims had grown far too wild and dangerous to be ignored, even by the most blindly loyal among us. I took care of a friend who would likely die soon, despite her youth and my best tending, leaving her children motherless and her husband relieved. I was to marry someone soon and leave Starfall and King’s Landing forever—it was expected, it was unavoidable. 

_Perhaps Ned Stark?_ I considered the choice only briefly, and did so as I danced with Barristan Selmy, wondering if Ned would ever make me feel the same way I felt at that moment. 

I hushed my musings and instead laid my head against Barristan’s chest, sighing softly in his embrace. I was content. I was at peace, held in the strong, constant arms of a man who loved me.

Barristan Selmy _loved_ me. He’d never said a word about it but I’d known it for a long time.

Barristan loved me the way the stars love the dawn. Watching it crest the horizon from an untouchable place, ever together, ever apart. He would fade into the background of my life without complaint, as I married, as I left the king’s city for good. 

Like the stars, I knew he’d reappear when the world turned darkest again. I depended on it. I trusted it. I…

_Why didn’t you send for me?_

_They said you were grievously injured at the Trident. They said you wouldn’t live through it. And any raven’s message I sent would have been ripped in two by Robert’s hands._

_But I didn’t die, Ashara. I didn’t die._

_Ned brought back my brother’s sword, with Arthur’s blood still on the blade._

_I know…_

_Ned embraced me and held me while I wept over my brother. I let my brother’s murderer comfort me, because I had no one else…_

_I know…_

_Because I was alone, Barristan. There was no one left. They killed Elia and the children. They killed my brother. They killed you. And I was all alone._

_I know, Ashara. I know._

Our eyes spoke what our voices could not.

“You’re real, aren’t you? Not some ghost sent to torment me further?” Barristan’s tone held a note of defeat, knowing he was in Qarth, a city of wicked deeds and cruel trickery. And in the house of a red priestess, known for their duplicity and service to a god who takes more than he gives. 

His hand slipped from my wrist, finally, the shock wearing off, suspicion setting in.

I still couldn’t speak, caught up in my lost memories, my voice a useless thing. 

Barristan swallowed in the silence between us, stating plainly, “If you’re a ghost, Ashara, leave me quickly. I beg you.”

It _was_ him, wasn’t it? 

“I’m no more ghost than you are,” I told him, before asking, with a hesitation and fear that I hadn’t felt since I was still a young girl, dressed in black veils, sitting on a grassy bank beside my mother’s tomb. My voice went very small, “Are you?”

“No, I’m here. I’m truly here,” he shook his head at the unlikely words, reaching out with a sheen of tears in his pale, blue eyes. With tenderness, the palm of his hand softly ran over the curve of my cheek, daring a caress that he never would have attempted before. 

Not even on the night we danced, when my eyes might have begged it from him.

Hot tears of my own pooled in my eyes at his touch, destroying my vision, making it all blur before me. The past, the present, the future. All colliding as one. 

Quaithe, the shadowbinder. Ashara, the grieving girl. Both had made decisions that I couldn’t reconcile now, years ago and countries apart. 

_You failed yourself_ , I knew it was true.

But with the lost memories came the reason I had cut them out in the first place. By root and by stem. That day with Rhaenys and her kitten—that’s when I knew Barristan loved me. That night at the dance—that’s when I knew I loved him back.

When Ned came to Starfall, he told me that Rhaegar was dead, the rubies of the prince’s breastplate scattered in the river, trampled in the mud. He told me my brother was dead, slain by his own hand and the hand of Howland Reed at a tower named for bitter, bitter joy. And he told me Barristan would soon be dead as well. He said no man could live through the injuries he took at the Trident. 

Ned shook his head on the waste of it all, and left me to return to his wife, his son and his king, leaving me with _Dawn_ and the silence of a seaside castle that held nothing but the names of its dead. And me. Always me.

_Where Jenny would dance with her ghosts…_

If I couldn’t remember Barristan Selmy, I’d never feel the pain of losing him. At home, I remember wishing for the power to make it so. Later, in Asshai, I seized it with quaking hands.

In Qarth, my tears continued to fall. Not for me, but for the broken-hearted girl I once was and the grief that had told Ashara Dayne she _must_ give up her sweetest memories…forever.

She was wrong. _I_ was wrong. 

Barristan stood before me now. And he was not lost. He was not dead.

Forty years ago, I’d walked out of his embrace at the end of that dance. He’d pressed a chaste kiss against my forehead, pressing the pads of his fingers against my palms, before releasing me to the remains of the night. My heart was full, my cheeks were flushed. I looked back once as I climbed the stairs to the guest chambers, granting him a parting smile that he answered in kind.

It would be our _last_ smile. 

For only days later, Rhaegar Targaryen laid a wreath of blue roses in Lyanna Stark’s lap. And _nothing_ was ever the same again.

From the moment I stepped out of Barristan’s arms, my world turned as black as a hole in the ground, as cold as the ice that collects on whaling ships crossing the northern seas in mid-winter. 

I’d have lingered in his arms forever, if only I’d known what was coming. I’d have kept hold of that night, that dance and that man, until they pried me from him, screaming. 

So I walked back into his arms now, my own arms sliding up around his neck and my cheek brushing his on its way to laying my head against his shoulder. As he gathered me up in his embrace, I clung to that man as if I’d never left.


	19. A House of Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #GirlTalk 
> 
> <3

**_Missandei_ **

“Daenielle, why are there four ducks in the garden?” Daenerys’s voice carried from her summer kitchen, while her youngest daughter answered from the white steps of the front terrace. The windows in the villa were all open to the midday air so they were able to speak easily, despite the distance between the front and back of the house.

“There should be a goose too,” Daenielle amended her mother’s count. 

I heard the red door open, and the little girl walked through the front hall to join her mother and observe the waterfowl for herself. She murmured, “Grandfather said he’d find me a goose.”

As she passed the sunroom, Daenielle waved and said a brief, “Hello, Missandei,” to me. I answered with a warm smile and a “Hello, Daenielle” back before watching her wander out of view once more, picking up the conversation with her mother seamlessly.

“So this is your Grandfather’s doing?” Daenerys continued, with her tone betraying little surprise at the revelation.

“He said you wouldn’t mind…” Daenielle insisted.

“And what am I supposed to do with these ducks? Cook them for dinner?”

“No, Mama! You can’t cook them. Aemon says they’ll eat slugs and snails and keep pests away from the vegetable patches. And they’re clever too. Well, the goose is anyway. I’m not so sure about the ducks…”

“A full-grown dragon isn’t enough for you, darling? Now you want a flock of ducks and a goose to look after too?”

The little girl replied very bluntly and very simply, “Yes.”

I didn’t hear Daenerys’s long-suffering sigh, but I could imagine it easily, even a few rooms away. As I listened to the back and forth between mother and daughter, I grinned into the pages of the book balanced on my lap, amused. I held my place on the page by resting the first finger of my bandaged hand in the middle of the line.

_Oh, lay my sweet lass, down in the damp grass..._

“Look, Mama! They found the water fountain.”

“Well, they’re ducks, aren’t they? Clever or not, they should be able to find water easily enough…”

This wasn’t the first time they’d had a discussion like this. The house of Jorah and Daenerys Mormont was tranquil, I’d found, but _rarely_ quiet, as the children were in and out during the day, as were their mother and father and the old man, with his white beard and merry, twinkling smile, whose downstairs bedroom was right next to the one they’d given to me. 

I didn’t sleep well those first few weeks, even after I started to heal. I was too used to waking up hours before dawn, willingly disposed to my master’s bidding at any hour. The old man woke early too—he said it was a curse of old age and that I should avoid it as long as possible. 

But as soon as I was able to sit up and take nourishment again, Jeor Mormont decided I was well enough to join him for hot cider every morning, if I was awake anyway. And so he would brew a pot for both of us and bring two cups out to the sunroom as we sat in comfortable silence and watched the sun come up over the sea.

Every once in a while, I’d smell something a little more powerful wafting off the lip of his mug, as he brought mine within reach of my clumsy, bandaged hands, but Jeor would just wink at me and say, “Don’t tell Daenerys.”

It was so very strange, to be plucked from the dusty clay of Astapor, with its familiar smells of blood and suffering and sweat and toil, the daily sounds of cracking lashes and groans on the Walk—to be flown hundreds of miles away, by _dragons_ , of all things, to the blue-green edge of the Jade Sea. And to this house, a calm, gentle place, the existence of which I would have steadfastly denied, if I hadn’t seen it myself. 

How could a place like this exist and _thrive_ in the cruel, unjust world I knew to be my own? It seemed an impossible thing. Much like my survival…

But slowly, my bruises healed. And my wounds closed and knit back together, under careful tending, treated with cooling balms and healing ointments that were rubbed into my skin by gentle hands. The bandages on my hands had yet to come off, but they would. And soon. The scars would remain with me for a long time, although Jeorgianna thought they might eventually fade away.

“There’s a shepherd who lives in the hill country whose hands were torn up in a tumble down the cliff side. Bithia said he…,” Jeorgianna started, before her mother cringed and asked her to spare us the more specific details of the shepherd’s injuries. Daenerys didn’t appear to be the squeamish type but I assume she didn’t want me reminded of similar pain that I was only just recovering from.

Jeorgianna complied, finishing with the most relevant detail, assuring me, “You can barely tell his hands were once scraped raw.”

But I didn’t mind if the scars faded. I didn’t mind if they stayed with me forever—the jagged scars on my back or even the ones marring my face. I didn’t mind because I was _free_.

I was free for the first time since I was a child, sitting cross-legged on the warm beaches of Naath, eating citrus fruit as those boats came across the blue water.

I was free to wake when I wanted and to walk where I wanted. To speak words that were mine and mine alone. Or to choose to stay silent if I wished, and just watch and listen instead, which I found I preferred most of the time. 

For all my languages, I didn’t _like_ to speak. Not really.

But there was great comfort in hearing others speak, at least here, in this house, where the words tended to be about little things, warm things, soft things, like ducks bathing in a garden pond. 

I don’t remember most of what happened that day in Astapor. I don’t suppose I’ll ever remember it. I remember Grey Worm calling my name, I remember Jeorgianna’s face hovering above me, and then Daenerys. At first, I mistook one for the other, thinking I was seeing double. 

I drifted in and out of consciousness for days, struggling against a strong, black current that wanted to drag me down beneath black waves to a cold grave. 

Death, I suppose.

But I woke in a room of sunshine, to the trilling melodies of songbirds in the gardens. I thought I might have died and the gods took pity on me at last—but then why did my hands still sting like mad and my eyes were so swollen I couldn’t open them and my left knee wouldn’t work, even if I begged it to try.

Pain, for whatever it’s worth, reminds you that you’re still living. And I continued living, in fits and starts. If I’d been well, I know I would have mistrusted the kindness of the Mormonts. But I was too tired to fight their kindness, or to second-guess it. 

And by the time I’d started to heal, I didn’t want to second-guess it, as they took me in with a natural warmth that made me feel like I might have known them and lived here with them always, and I couldn’t turn away from that.

_Oh, lay my sweet lass, down in the damp grass, and wait on the blue skies to find you…_

I finished the lines I was reading just as Daenerys appeared in the archway, with a garden basket in one hand and two bowls in the other. There were fresh cherries piled high in the basket and she came to sit beside me, setting the basket on a small end table between us. I set the book of Westerosi songs and poetry aside. 

“That girl,” Daenerys grumbled, knowing I’d overheard the conversation with Daenielle. She shook her head from side to side, as she passed me one of the bowls and a paring knife, but I could tell she was less peeved than she was pretending. 

It took maybe two days in this house to know that Jorah Mormont could not say no to his youngest daughter, but I’d discovered in my time here that Daenerys had nearly as much trouble as her husband, despite the conventional wisdom that might say otherwise. 

“How’s your knee?” she wondered. As I was reading, I’d stretched both my legs out along the length of the couch, sitting propped up against the armrest, keeping the left one slightly elevated, as Jeorgianna had instructed.

“It’s better,” I answered, with muted enthusiasm. The knee was taking longer to heal than most of my other injuries. And I was impatient to be whole again. “I walked from here to the doorway this morning, using Aemon as a crutch.”

“You’ll be strolling in the gardens by yourself soon,” Daenerys assured me, choosing optimism, as she reached for a handful of cherries. 

She gave a lesser amount to me, knowing that my hands would need some extra time to manage the task. But she knew I didn’t like feeling useless, so would have me try, even if I was miserable at it. She dug into the skin of the fruit, using the edge of the knife to coax out the stone within. 

“I’ll likely fall as soon as I take a step on uneven ground,” I replied, hating how unsteady my steps still were. Like a child. And my poor hands. My fingers shook a little as I pulled at the stem of the cherry, weak from weeks of recovery.

“Not if someone’s there to catch you,” she argued. Her words were pleasant and true. I knew that there were _many_ hands in this house that would not let me fall. But I found a hollow ache resonated in my heart as I was reminded of the last time someone kept me from falling.

_Grey Worm…_

There’d been no news from Slaver’s Bay for some time. The trade routes were interrupted as there was unrest in the region, but the nature of that unrest was still…undetermined. There were rumors and stories that changed from day to day, sometimes granting the victory in Astapor to the masters, sometimes to the slaves. I worried and fretted for Grey Worm, knowing nothing of what happened after the children flew me away from the docks that day I ripped Master Kraznys’s edict in two.

Was he slain only minutes after? Hours, days? By some miracle, did he live still?

“What’s he like?” Daenerys wondered, watching the expression on my face, observing the conflict in my features and guessing the reason for it. She gave me a small smile. “Your soldier, I mean?”

I blinked, not realizing that I gave myself away so easily. But I suppose I was used to masters who paid little, if any, attention to me other than to bark orders or demand a translation. Daenerys was more discerning and had an easy, open manner. She hid nothing of her feelings and had told me she liked me from the moment she saw me. She said that in another life, she thinks we might have been sisters.

I don’t know if such a thing could be possible. But I felt like I could talk with her about anything. When she asked me questions, it didn’t feel like prying, it felt like sharing. 

And I hadn’t had anyone to share with, except for Grey Worm…in as long as I could remember.

“He’s…,” I tried to find the right words. But nineteen languages were somehow not enough. I tried anyway, clumsily, “He sees me. Not what I look like or the words I have to say or…and I don’t _have_ to say anything with him. He just knows what I’m…”

My words failed me, but Daenerys was nodding along, seeming to understand exactly what my rambling words were attempting to say.

“With him, you feel safe. As if the whole world might collapse around you but it wouldn’t matter,” she guessed. “Because as long as he’s near, as long as he exists, you feel like you can bear anything.”

“Yes,” I answered, wondering how this woman I barely knew could know the secret words written on my heart. 

Her gaze lifted from the bowl of cherries and drifted over to that old book of songs that I’d set aside. She said, “Jorah gave me that book the first day we met. It’s all he had left of his home but he gave it to me. A stranger, a girl he owed nothing. All because he wanted to wipe the forlorn look off my terrified face.”

“Did he?”

She nodded again, her expression turning wistful and slightly melancholy. She told me, “That day should’ve been one of the worst days of my life. I was sold, I was raped—and my brother showed me his truest nature, letting me know once and for all that he would see me torn into a thousand pieces, if only it gave him what he wanted…”

She paused, digging in the basket for another cherry, breaking off its stem with a twist, before musing, “But it wasn’t a sad day. Despite all that happened, it can never be a day I regret. Because it was the day I met Jorah.”

“You love him very much, don’t you?” I asked, my hands stilling on the cherry I broke apart with unsteady fingers. The cherry juice stained the white bandages on my left hand but Jeorgianna would be changing the dressings in only a few hours. 

I knew little of marriages and romance, as Astapor was not a city known for either, and it’s not tolerated in the ranks of slaves, except behind closed doors and stolen kisses between the hedges. But even _I_ knew that most marriages, north or south, east or west, on either side of the sea, were based in trade or on alliances between scheming fathers who wished to pursue power and rank, or a coin purse. 

Love rarely had anything to do with it. 

But I’d also been observing Jorah and Daenerys together for many weeks—little touches, stolen glances—and knew that love not only existed here. It flourished, blooming like summer flowers and the lemon trees in the gardens and orchards outside. 

At my question, the wistful look on Daenerys’s face was replaced by a wide, pretty grin that creased the deeper smile lines around her eyes. She seemed like she might say more before deciding to confirm, in the simplest of terms, “I do.”

Her tone gave those two words _far_ more weight than a linguist might ever imagine possible. I don’t think I could translate it if I tried. But I shared her smile, thinking of a man with gold flecks in his warm, brown eyes, while trying _not_ to think on where he might be now, and what the good masters might have done to him after what happened on the Walk of Punishment.

_Please let him be alive…_

A little time later, the red door to the villa opened and closed again, but this time under the heavier footfall of a man, instead of a little girl. Jorah’s voice drifted in from the front hall, “Daenerys?”

“In here, Jorah,” Daenerys answered her husband’s call, while giving me a shared smirk, as she’d nearly been caught in the act of singing his praises. 

The tall man appeared under the archway to the sunroom within moments. He greeted us both, but his hands were soon holding out a rolled message to Daenerys—a letter with a lion’s seal, broken under Jorah’s hand. Daenerys’s smirk faded away at the sight of that gold, waxed seal, and its lion crest, confusion dancing in her violet eyes. 

But Jorah just gestured at the missive, encouraging her to read it for her herself, as the words written there would speak for themselves better than he could. She set the split cherry and paring knife in her bowl, rising and wiping her red-stained finger tips on a scrap of cloth before taking the message from his offered hand.

As Daenerys’s eyes dropped to the meat of the letter, scanning its contents quickly, Jorah spared a measured glance on me, one I couldn’t quite read, although his eyes were kind, as always. My eyes flickered between Jorah’s eyes and the letter in Daenerys’s hands. 

He explained, “There’s news from Slaver’s Bay…”


	20. The King in His Vineyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm adding a minor Jaime/Brienne tag - for the dash of Braime that I couldn't help but add to this chapter :) #LannisterBros #FamilyBonding And this may not be the last we hear from the Isle of Tarth, since I just finished rewatching "A Knight For the Seven Kingdoms" (*la la la I can't hear you about what comes next la la la*)
> 
> And Clea! Do you remember her? Probably not. She was the snarky slave-prostitute who Tyrion meets in Volantis in Season 5. She seemed cool - and honestly, I think his interaction with her was the last moment I truly liked Tyrion in the show...
> 
> salzrand! Stop making Daario so attractive as a middle aged man-boy (joking, please continue) ;)
> 
> Thanks, as always, for your kudos/comments/love! Mwah to all <3

**_Tyrion_ **

My wife has a tear-shaped tattoo on her face, drawn right below her left eye. 

She’s had it since she was thirteen, when a man bought her at auction and decided that she was old enough to serve as a bedslave for one of his seedier brothels in Volantis.

I told her once that I might be able to find someone who could remove it. But she says she has no interest in erasing her past and pretending it never happened.

_You once told me that I could spot a liar. And that’s true, Tyrion. But I don’t want to catch that liar staring back at me from my own looking glass._

Clea always cuts to the heart of the matter. I like that about her. I liked that about her the moment I met her, in her master’s cheap brothel at the Long Bridge in Volantis, on my way to seek out the lost Targaryen princess with Varys all those many years ago.

That trip didn’t work out as planned. Or at all, if I’m being honest. 

I can still remember Daenerys Stormborn’s steely look as she came down from tucking her babes into bed and told us that she’d have her husband throw our heads in the sea if we ever darkened their doorstep again. Ser Jorah was well-pleased with her strong words, adding nothing more than a curt nod towards our speedy exit.

It was not _quite_ the reception we’d been hoping for.

Varys took it harder than I did. He was too used to his schemes fitting together nicely and his plans coming to fruition, one way or another, even if it took him years to manage it. I think he assumed that she’d need some convincing to come out of hiding, but I don’t think he’d ever imagined the absurd idea of a Targaryen flat out refusing the Iron Throne.

Much less for the sake of binding herself to a quiet life spent mothering Ser Jorah Mormont’s children at the edge of a foreign sea. Who would have thought it? 

Oh, but I’ll drink to their health and happiness. And what’s more, I’ll do it gladly. Even if their hospitality last time I saw them was…lacking, to say the least.

Because it didn’t matter in the end, did it? My sister was slain by the youngest Stark girl, the one we all thought was long dead. Stannis ascended the throne _without_ his red priestess, despite Varys’s deepest fears, and brought the Seven Kingdoms out of war and into something approaching peace and prosperity. 

Or rather, Six Kingdoms and Jon Stark’s Free North, as they now say. A Free North granted by treaty and agreement, rather than bloodshed.

The White Walkers were defeated, together with all the grumpkins and snarks, I imagine. The Iron Fleet was decimated by the whims of a winter storm. Their deranged captain lashed himself to the icy mast of his ship as it went down, wild-eyed and promising to return _as_ the damned Drowned God someday. 

Gods, but Euron Greyjoy was mad.

The Iron Bank was appeased by Stannis’s modest spending habits. Littlefinger found a new protégé in Robin Arryn. Sansa Stark raises her children in Winterfell. 

And my brother, Jaime…

Clea and I visited the Sapphire Isle recently, to celebrate the shared nameday of my golden-haired niece and nephew. The twins turned ten this year—Leo has his mother’s skill with a blade and Leia has her father’s irrepressible charm. 

They are sweet children, lacking the cruel, calculating nature that runs through our family tree like a poisonous weed. They remind me of Myrcella and Tommen—of course they do. But they call Jaime “Father” and have never known him as anything else.

When they first learned the word, Brienne says Jaime’s eyes misted over.

_He wept like a bloody woman_ , she told me, but her tone was dripping with affection. 

It was all so very…unlike how I thought it would go. 

And certainly not as dire as Varys might have predicted. I’m afraid this has put him in a sour mood for most of the last decade. With no kings to usurp or red priestesses to plot against or Littlefinger to spar with, he’s found himself adrift, without purpose or aim. 

He really should try drinking wine. 

Wine or cleverness. At some point in every man’s life, the choice must be made. And I made mine very soon after we left the Jade Sea.

I think it was seeing Jorah Mormont kneel down and say goodnight to his daughter. Or the red color of their front door, the lemon trees in the gardens, or the sweet taste of that blush wine at a stranger’s wedding by the sea. I’m not sure. But I decided I was done with it. _All_ of it. The politics, the schemes, the great game. Who was I to play it anyway? Who was I to fashion a better world, when I wasn’t even sure what a better world might look like? 

Impulsively, I parted ways with Varys in Volantis. Not on bad terms, but I bid the eunuch farewell just the same. 

I walked straight to that brothel on the Long Bridge and used most of my remaining gold to buy Clea from her master. I was a little drunk when I did it, smirking slyly and telling her she was now free to roam the world looking for liars at her pleasure. 

But in another unforeseen turn of events, she decided to stay with me.

She’s stayed with me ever since. With the last of my money, we bought a little wine stall that soon turned enough profit that we were able to buy our own little vineyard further up the fertile banks of the Rhoyne. And with the money we made off crushing our own grapes, we bought a few more vineyards, just to make sure that we’d never run out. 

I always thought that my proximity to the Lannister fortune was pure luck, a gift from the gods to make up for what they did to me in my mother’s womb. But as it turns out, I have a knack for making money. Perhaps all Lannisters are the same. Since the day I bought that wine stall, I’ve always been able to pay my debts. 

And then some.

The posh Volantene palace that I bought for Clea a few years ago is located in a wealthy district that barely acknowledges the existence of the Long Bridge or any other slum in the city, too gilded, too fine, too expensive to mix with the common morass. Our country estate spans two thousand acres, all green vineyards, blue skies and the rushing Rhoyne.

My pockets are deep and my influence is far-reaching, in a way that I never expected. 

Had he lived to see it, I think Father might have been proud of my rise. If not for the fact that I’d married a whore, after all. Or made my fortune by selling wine. Or delivered the blow that killed him. Or been born a dwarf in the first place.

But I’m afraid it’s too late to take all that back now. And I don’t think much on Father these days, except to drink to his memory with Jaime. 

The world has moved on, stepping out of the long shadow of Tywin Lannister at last. There are other, more pressing matters to attend.

When I heard Slaver’s Bay was in open rebellion, with an Unsullied captain taking up a war against the masters of that place, with a fervor that felt like a holy crusade, my interest was piqued. When I heard a wilder and stranger story, about two dragons coming to his aid on the Walk of Punishment in Astapor, and perhaps setting off the whole thing, I asked for details.

The description of the riders—a young girl with silver-blonde hair, a young boy with a steady demeanor—left me with little doubt as to where those dragons came from. Daenerys Stormborn and Ser Jorah Mormont were just full of surprises, weren’t they?

The Unsullied took Astapor and held it, expertly, militarily, with less chaos and bloodshed than one might expect from a slave army gone rogue. The commander, it was said, had an eye on liberating the entire region. 

He moved carefully, turning the reins of the city over to a council of newly freed men and women from every walk of life—laborers, healers, farmers, sailors, tradesmen—those who knew how best to keep an old city fed, clothed and housed, but this time without the heavy foot of cruel masters pressing down upon their necks. Grey Worm then took his army north, single-minded in his quest.

When they marched on Yunkai, I summoned a meeting with the Second Sons, and their recently promoted lieutenant, a vainglorious bastard from Tyrosh named Daario Naharis, as I had a proposition for him.

I wanted to pay him and his Second Sons to join the Unsullied’s fight against the masters in Yunkai and Meereen. I was willing to pay handsomely. And what I wanted in return should be easy enough to procure—a small vineyard in the greener hills just above Meereen. 

“A foreign dwarf will finance allies for the Unsullied because of a vineyard?” Daario Naharis shook his head at me skeptically, happy with the price I offered, but confused as to why I’d be willing to spend so much for so little. 

We lounged on the balcony of my Rhoyne-facing estate, with fruit of the vineyard scenting the air and heavy-laden barges headed to Volantis floating by, sounds of gentle, lapping waters left in their slow wake. Daario Naharis sat on the opposite chaise, both his feet planted on my polished marble floor, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, as he flipped his knife casually, hilt over blade. He mentioned, “You do know that they make shit wine in Slaver’s Bay, don’t you?”

“The shittiest,” I agreed. I reached for a carafe containing one of my own, smoother vintages. I poured the last of the red liquid into my glass, before setting the carafe beside its empty twin, on a low table, adorned with silver and bronze platters of fruit and cheeses, between us. 

I’m nothing if not a generous host.

“And yet…,” Daario stopped playing with his knife long enough to reach for the silver tray, popping a plump, red grape into his mouth.

“And yet, a man wants what he wants,” I told the sellsword, not interested in sharing the minute details of my business ventures with him. He wouldn’t understand them anyway.

It was a delicate business, being the undisputed king of all Volantene wine country.

My wines were known the world over. I had few true rivals left. There were a couple Dornish reds that even _I_ would never match. Nor would I want to. They were delicious. Three racks in my wine cellar are dedicated to their fine varieties. There was that Jade Sea blush that I tasted however many years ago, while watching the Targaryen girl dance with her Mormont lord—a wine for long summers and romantic fancy. But lucky for me, the vineyard-owner didn’t sell outside his own region. 

And a mysterious white, which _was_ sold here, in Volantis and throughout the Free Cities. The nectar of the gods they say, originating somewhere in the East, but no one knew exactly where. 

The owners of that white vintage had been cutting into my profits for years, and I had no way to stop them, not knowing where the wine came from.

Until recently… 

I’d heard of a small plantation on the northern side of Meereen, ancient and glorious as the city itself. The Vineyard of the Harpy’s Grace, held by the Loraq family since the days of the Ghis Empire. My informant tells me that the winemakers refuse to include a mark on the brand, too worried that the association of Slaver’s Bay will turn away prospective buyers before they’ve risked a taste.

Their fears are grounded in sense. The pale, yellow grapes that grow in Meereen are said to yield the worst vintage in the entire world. I’ve tasted a bottle. It’s objectively awful. But I’ve suspected for some time that there may be a simple reason for this. Slaver’s Bay is rich in copper, mined in the hills by slaves who are worked to death, their blood mixing in with the red dust they dig in. 

Blood and copper soak into the land, poisoning the vines and leaving a metallic aftertaste that no winemaker in his right mind would allow on the market.

_Except_ in the Vineyard of the Harpy’s Grace, where the grapes grow on a hillside far above the copper mines, away from their toxic, bloody veins. All pale, white fruit grown on a lush, green vine.

If Slaver’s Bay was changing hands—and given the events in Astapor, it appeared inevitable—now seemed the time to take advantage of a coming lapse in ownership and a seizure of all lands formerly owned by slave masters. I promised Clea—I would have that white vintage for my own. 

“Will you do it?” I asked Daario Naharis. 

“Join the cockless in deposing the stuffy and pompous masters of Slaver’s Bay?” Daario considered the well-paying idea only a moment longer, shrugging to himself as he made the decision. He sheathed his knife and took one last grape before rising from the tufted chaise. He offered me a courtly bow, both arms outstretched, facetious, as was the man’s way. “Consider it done, my lord.”

I reached down and threw him a coin purse overflowing with gold pieces, from a pile of similar bags. I told him, “Just make sure you have the keys to that vineyard when we toast to victory in the Pyramid at Meereen.”

Weeks passed. 

Yunkai fell easily once the Second Sons joined the Unsullied. The wise masters tried to pay off my Second Sons, but their price fell dismally short, as did their previously expected mortality. The combined forced marched on to Meereen and took that city too.

Or almost.

The Great Pyramid stood defiant, its great masters retreating and taking refuge in a stronghold that might outlast every army we could muster and march to Meereen. The siege would take _years_. They held two hundred slaves hostage and were suing for peace. But Grey Worm, the stoic Unsullied commander, had little interest in peace or final negotiation. 

His terms were simple. The masters must surrender. There would be no accord. 

Strong words from a strong commander. How…inconvenient. His Unsullied had the Pyramid surrounded. No master would leave that place alive if they attempted to flee. But nor could they force them out. In the streets, former slaves tore off their collars and rejoiced. But the Unsullied would not declare victory, nor fall back from the Pyramid until it was under their control. 

This put the city at a standstill, stuck somewhere between liberty and slavery, with the new order unable to stand until the old order was finally struck down.

After they took the city, I journeyed to Meereen myself, after Daario Naharis sent word that delivery of my vineyard would be delayed, as there was a final Meereenese knot that needed pulling. Day and night, the Unsullied stood at the ready, while the obstinate masters peered out from stone windows, high above. 

When I arrived, Grey Worm was scowling up at the Pyramid. Daario Naharis sat on a toppled, bronze statue, flipping his knife and sighing with boredom. 

There was an indefiniteness to how long this might last. But I wanted it over. I’ve never been a patient man. That’s Varys’s game. And I wanted my vineyard now.

I spoke with the stubborn masters, whose blindness would be comical if it weren’t so deeply ingrained. I spoke to the stubborn captain of the Unsullied. Or I tried to, as he was a man of _obscenely_ few words.

“We spoke twice on the road from Yunkai to Meereen,” Daario Naharis commiserated, adding with a wink, “I think we’ve bonded to the point of brothers.”

I spoke to Grey Worm’s men about what happened that day in Astapor, about the slave-woman who started the whole thing off by defying her master in the first place. About Grey Worm’s unyielding campaign to bring justice to the masters ever since that woman was carried away…

_Missandei, the woman he loved._

I may have given up cleverness for wine, but I decided there might be another way to end this useless standoff after all. 

So I penned a rushed letter to Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen, giving them news of what had transpired and entreating them to come end the Rebellion in Slaver’s Bay, in much the same way it had started. By bringing dragons to Meereen and frightening those last, stubborn masters into seeing the reality that surrounded them. That Slaver’s Bay would no longer engage in the trade of flesh and that their reigns of terror had come to an end.

I told the Mormonts that they wouldn’t need to join the fight. Just show up and I would talk my way out of the rest, with dragons at my back.

Symbolism is a powerful tool. Not quite as strong as love. But close.

The symbolism of dragons, an iron throne, a pyramid, a vineyard, a family name. Or a single teardrop.

Before I left for Slaver’s Bay, I bid Clea farewell by planting a kiss against that false tear at the top of her cheek.

I’d insisted that my involvement in the Rebellion at Slaver’s Bay was based on nothing more than securing that vineyard in Meereen. _Nothing_ more than that. Until the day I died, I would insist upon it, as I was a selfish, boorish imp who had betrayed my family and killed my own father. Killed my mother too, by ripping her open as I came into this world, monstrous and malformed, didn’t Cersei remind me of that enough?

This is who I was. This is who I was comfortable being.

But noting the spot of my kiss, Clea’s dark eyes had flickered intelligently and she huffed on a half-laugh, “You’re _such_ a liar, Tyrion Lannister…”

She sighed at my silence, before kissing me back, “But I love you just the same.”


	21. The Sea Strand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fact that I haven't written a long walk on the beach scene for Jorah/Daenerys yet is unacceptable #SummerLove #BeachBabes 
> 
> I've corrected this oversight...with salzrand's impossibly gorgeous help (*so. much. fangirl. squealing.* #asklkadsdkfladkask) <3 <3 <3
> 
> I'm behind on replying to comments again, but will catch up! You all spoil me with kindness. Sweet, insightful and generous. Best readers everrrrr. Much love to all :)

**_Jorah_ **

That evening, Daenerys and I walked the length of the beach at low tide, meandering along the retreating surf, barefoot on the dampened sands and bathed in the tangerine-orange glow of sunlight bouncing over glassy, blue-green waters. 

It was a familiar path for us and one we’d taken a thousand times before. We could walk it blind.

As we wandered, my hands were thrust deep in my pockets, while she looped her arm around mine absently, one hand curling at my wrist. The other she kept for herself, in a nearly constant, if good-natured, battle with the gentle strums of sea breeze, always so intent on playing in her silver-blonde hair. 

I would never grow tired of the way her hands brushed wayward strands out of her pretty eyes. Nor of walking with her on sandy beaches while speaking in low, hushed tones. My words were for her ears only, the rest lost to the thundering crash of waves as the white-crested water pitched forward and then fell back, tugged and pulled along by the tide’s endless dance.

There was nothing so constant as the roll of combers on the sea and the misty spray of spindrift lifting off the waters. The gentle roar of cresting waves, their waters breaking upon the long shoreline. The caw of white gulls, squabbling over crabs stranded by the tide, and the scent of salt, mixed with jasmine and beach aster. 

I’d been born by the sea, same as my father and my mother. So had Daenerys. So had our children. There was constancy in this as well, and steadiness, as the ocean never changed, even as the world around it did. The pitch and roll of waves would persist, having started long before we were born and to be continued long after we were gone. 

It was a truth I learned early as a boy, going down to watch the waves after my mother passed away—the sea made a soothing balm against restlessness and uncertainty.

I didn’t expect Tyrion Lannister’s letter, and having read its contents, I was uncertain. We hadn’t heard from Tyrion since he and The Spider showed up here, more than a decade ago now, playing at a vain game of kings and queens that Daenerys and I wanted no part in. We knew nothing of what happened to either of them after they left our house, but with Stannis Baratheon ascending the throne of Westeros, it seemed whatever mischief they intended must not have taken root.

From his letter, it sounded as if Tyrion, at least, had given that game up. For good. Still, his request was unthinkable and presumptuous. As before, he wanted to drag Daenerys and I into affairs that had little to do with us. He shouldn’t have dared ask. 

And yet, I was conflicted.

There was no denying what had transpired in Astapor the day Jeorgianna and Aemon rescued Missandei from certain death. News had obviously spread, as Tyrion seemed well aware of the dragons’ existence and our family’s connection with them. 

He was a clever man, too clever. It was a Lannister trait that I’d never warmed to. And I couldn’t trust his discretion, especially as I didn’t know whether he still kept company with Varys, a man whose little birds spanned the width and breadth of the entire world. Tyrion may have been the first to draw these conclusions, but he wouldn’t be the last. 

I knew this day would come, I’d warned Daenerys about it often enough. But there was no helping it. Jeorgianna and Aemon had done the right thing, interceding and bringing Missandei back with them. How could I possibly argue against that? 

And as Missandei slowly recovered and healed, any other choice seemed impossible anyway. The entire family adopted her, even Father, almost at once. She was an observant woman and wise, certainly less rash than her story might betray. Daenerys loved her immediately, as a sister, and I felt a strange kinship with her as well, despite only knowing her for a few weeks.

Was it some natural sympathy that drew me to her? Daenerys told me she had a vision of the three of us, younger by a score of years, standing on a pier, but couldn’t remember the rest of it. Perhaps our paths were meant to cross, always?

Or was it guilt, over deeds done long ago? Guilt that came rushing back at the exact moment I tore that slave collar from Missandei’s neck. 

I couldn’t decide.

Daenerys sensed my conflict. Of course she did—sharing in some of it, as she knew me well enough to know why I might find the idea of aiding the Unsullied in Slaver’s Bay to be appealing, even without the request of a Lannister dwarf whose motivations appeared to be as self-serving as always.

At least he was honest about it.

But there was redemption in helping the slaves overthrow their masters. _Redemption_. I can’t say that I haven’t craved that word’s sweet flavor now and again, even though the years between my darkest hour and this one grow as long as shadows at twilight.

“You always speak of redemption as if it’s beyond your reach,” Daenerys argued an old point, one she’d laid at my feet since we were first together, even before we married. She brought her free hand to my chest, to lay her palm flat against my heart. She insisted, “But it’s here, Jorah. It’s been here as long as I’ve known you.”

I didn’t answer her, ever unwilling to grant myself a reprieve for these sins. She loved me too much to say anything different. And I loved her all the more for it, slipping my hand from my pocket to come up and cover hers briefly, squeezing her fingers gently. 

She would forgive me anything, I think. 

_Except dying before your time. I would never forgive you for that…_

But the sins I pondered on were not hers to forgive. I exhaled slowly, trying to explain why her sweet words made no difference, “The worst part of it is that when I sold those poachers, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t realize in what way. I knew I’d lose my honor and that the northern lords would shake their heads in disgust. I knew Ned Stark would disapprove. I was willing to bear their scorn, if only I could get out from under Lynesse’s debts…” 

I paused before shaking my head, ruefully, “But I sold them, Daenerys. Do you understand? I sold them, as if they were cattle.”

She wouldn’t answer the charge directly, unwilling to fight a losing battle with me. She knew how this conversation typically ended. But she granted me, “You were a different person back then…”

“I was still me,” I countered. “Whatever part of my soul allowed me to do those things lives in me still, no matter how much I’d want to claim otherwise.”

“That’s not fair,” she replied, her expression going headstrong, her grip on me tightening as she pulled us to a slow stop. A breaking wave flooded the sand at our feet as we stood there, together, with her forcing me to meet her gaze. She continued, forcefully, “There are ugly parts in all of us. In you and me. In every single person who lives or has ever lived. But there are wonderful parts too…”

She reached up to draw my own sea-blown locks back from my brow. Her hand lingered against my cheek for a moment, before dropping back to join mine. 

“You’re no saint,” she teased, smirking knowingly. My lips curled in sync with hers, watching her eyes dance merrily on shared memories that might prove it. But she soon sobered once more, saying, “You’re my husband and my children’s father. You are the love of my life, the other half of my soul. And you tell me to hate this part of you…”

“Daenerys…”

“No, let me finish,” she replied, mentioning as an aside, “Gods, you’re stubborn,” before continuing. 

“The gods-honest truth is that you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t sold those men into slavery,” she put it bluntly, pressing her fingers against the center of my palms, making her case. “ _I_ wouldn’t be here. I’d have been butchered by bloodriders as soon as Khal Drogo passed into the Nightlands and you know it. Don’t try to argue. I wasn’t strong back then, and whatever strength I did have came from _you_. Without you, our children would never have been born. Jeorgianna, Aemon and Daenielle—their smiles, their voices, all lost to whatever vapors mist the strange world of lives unlived.” 

She sighed on the salted air, looking away, across the waters. She was impatient to convince me, even though she knew better. Still, my dear girl tried her best, standing firm, bringing her gaze back, “You want to wallow in the past but I can’t allow it, Jorah. You want me to hate the man you were. But I won’t. I _love_ you. And I _love_ your past, all of it. Not for the things that you did or the mistakes that you made, but for the path it led you on. Don’t ask me to wish it away…because in wishing it away, I’d have to wish away my own life, and yours, and our children’s. And I won’t do it.”

“It doesn’t make it right,” I managed, holding on to my own, worn-out arguments, feebly.

Her hands were on my face again, tenderly running the usual lines, with her eyes taking on that soft look that she gets whenever she finds me amusing, “No, it doesn’t,” she allowed. “But the worth of a life isn’t decided on one choice or one action. It’s the sum of everything. And what you do now, what you’ve done for as many years as I’ve known you, matters. These regrets that you keep so close matter. The very act of keeping them _matters_. Even if you don’t see it that way.”

She didn’t give me a chance to answer this time, stretching up to kiss me instead, stealing away from my lips whatever contrary words I might have spoken. There were no simple answers, she knew that. But Daenerys’s kiss mended much. 

In time, we resumed our walk up the beach, hand in hand. 

“You want us to take the dragons to Meereen?” I guessed, having seen the way her keen eyes moved over the Imp’s letter and the stern look on her face as she hadn’t it over to Missandei. I knew how she felt about the masters in Slaver’s Bay. I had a suspicion that in some other life, she would have taken up the slaves’ cause as her own. 

“Yes, I think we should,” Daenerys confirmed. She huffed, “I suppose I should be angry that Tyrion is attempting to use us for his own purposes. I warned him not to try that again…but I’m not saying this for his sake.”

“For Missandei,” I didn’t have to ask, and Daenerys nodded. 

With a single rip of parchment, that woman had started something that even she couldn’t have imagined. Even on such short acquaintance, it was obvious that she was brave and kind and deserved to see the glory that had been exchanged for her many bruises and deep wounds. She deserved to stand at the top of the Great Pyramid of Meereen and hear the deafening cheers of former slaves, celebrating in the streets below.

“Aemon wants to go,” Daenerys added, with a little pride in her voice. 

“Jeorgianna too,” I replied, much the same. 

There was no question for either of the children. They would never turn away from duty and the honorable thing. They both remembered the last time the four of us left home, to answer a desperate call from across the sea.

Their sense of justice and right and wrong remained as pure as when they were babes. I thought of Aemon, his many questions and little curls, held in my arms when we arrived at Castle Black all those years ago, snow flurries swirling around us. I thought of Jeorgianna, when she was still a little girl, holding onto to my leg, bravely peeking out at strangers in our midst.

When I thought back to what I’d done before I fled Bear Island, I felt deep shame. But when I thought on the idea that my children might never have been born, I felt such a terrible, hollow ache, in the very depths of my soul, that I…no, I couldn’t wish away the past either. 

Daenerys was right, as usual. 

“At least we aren’t going to fight off hordes of dead men this time,” she mused, evidently chewing on the same memories as I. But her tone was light and the truth in that statement lifted my mood by a few degrees. 

“Aye,” I replied, glad of that, at least.

She brought her second hand to join the others, keeping mine captive between her own, finally abandoning her battle with the sea breeze. The breeze won, twisting the unpinned strands of her hair wherever it desired. 

My eyes reaped the sea’s victory, taking in the comely sight with pleasure, before reaching out a helping hand, to smooth the strands back from her grinning face.


	22. Let Your Chains Rust, Let Your Collars Be Torn Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meereen is ancient and glorious, and now she's _free_. Which is better than being ancient and glorious. Vive la liberté, mes amis :)
> 
> And thank youuuuuu x 983778292, salzrand, for the drawing this week. This is brilliant and seriously all I ever wanted for Missandei <3

**_Jeorgianna_ **

I’d never seen anything like Meereen. 

White Harbor and Port Yhos were the largest cities I’d ever stepped foot in and they were both harbor towns, built for trade and transient populations, dwarfed by the exotic metropolis we now walked through. The eastern sun shone brilliantly off gold-plated domes of ancient temples and the many-colored bricks lining its bustling streets. The air smelled of rich spices, myrrh, saffron and cinnamon.

Wild mint, lady’s lace, palm fronds and dusky rose petals fell from high windows and spilled out from open archways, all being strewn at our feet by the swelling crowds, as we made a slow procession from the city square where the dragons had let us disembark to the Great Pyramid across the central plaza. 

The crowd noise was deafening and the cheers were many, as all of Meereen had emptied out of their teeming markets and tenements to the center of the city, filling the plaza beneath the Great Pyramid, to chance a glimpse of the famous Missandei. It took us little time to recognize just how her story had spread, far and wide, like the flames of a brushfire. 

While Missandei was recovering in the sunroom at home—baking fruit pies with Mama, walking the gardens with Aemon, reading fairy tales with Daenielle, listening to Grandfather tell stories of Bear Island, which Papa nodded along to, wistfully sometimes—her name was traversing Slaver’s Bay, up and down its coastlines, leaving a lasting mark on the hearts of former slaves throughout the region. 

None of them knew her before. But they all knew her now. They all knew what she’d done. They had dreamed about doing the same. And they blessed her for making that dream a reality. At last.

“Missandei! Missandei!”

Humble and shy, Missandei did little more than grant the crowds her small smile, eyes downcast and watching her steps on the fronds and ferns, as she led our procession towards the Pyramid’s main entrance, with its massive doors of marble and granite thrown open to the day and where Tyrion Lannister and Daario Naharis stood, waiting to formally receive us. 

We were accompanied by the small Unsullied escort that met us in the plaza. I trailed only a few steps behind Missandei, with my mother and father a few more steps back, and Aemon dawdling at the rear, taking it all in, his curious eyes on the height of the many pyramids, obelisks, temples and amphitheaters that dotted the city’s skyline.

I was no less curious and found my own gaze wandering, my mouth slightly agape at the sheer splendor and size of Meereen. How had they built these grand things? And how did they endure, thousands of years later? This city was already ancient when Aegon and his sisters took their dragons to Westeros. The idea seemed impossible. 

The height of the Great Pyramid was dizzying, towering eight hundred feet height and grazing the underbelly of white clouds. Nothing, except maybe the Wall at Castle Black, could compare to that sight. 

The pyramid loomed directly in front of us, at the center of Meereen. I had to crane my neck to see the top, where Dark Sister and Bearfyre were banking around its gleaming, slanted sides. The dragons liked how the pyramid reached into the rafters of the sky. I think it reminded them of the high cliffs at home. While Bearfyre made another pass around the summit, with his shadow climbing the pyramid’s limestone walls, Dark Sister perched on the topmost balcony, her talons gripping and stressing ancient stonework, as she let out a thunderous roar of delight, which echoed far beyond the city, up into the Ghiscari hill country.

The masters that had so recently surrendered that place likely didn’t hear any delight in my dragon’s roar. They heard menace and not-so-veiled threats, as they were convinced we brought the dragons here to devour them whole, one by one. Or burn them alive. I think Tyrion Lannister may have threatened something of the sort when he brokered the deal that finally had the masters release their hostages, and come down from the pyramid, tails set firmly between their legs.

Or hands tied by their own chains, more like.

But they would live. Lord Tyrion made Grey Worm and his Unsullied promise to spare the lives of the remaining masters. And what’s more, they would be allowed to remain in the city, freely, if they chose. Or leave and make their way elsewhere, if they could not bear the idea of what was to come. 

A free city. A free region. A free world? 

Papa told me that the last idea might prove to be too lofty, but he hoped he was wrong. Slavery would not magically end overnight, even as Meereen broke off its chains. Slave collars were piled in the streets, ready to be set ablaze after nightfall, to light up the city with tongues of bonfires, licking the darkness clean. 

But the Free Cities still kept slaves in their grand palaces, on their docks and in their fields. They hadn’t joined Slaver’s Bay in open revolt. Not yet. Nor would Asshai give up their slave trade as easily, needing a steady stream of sacrifices to feed their shadow temples and hidden crypts.

Still…

Meereen currently shouted and cried with joy, as the dragons flew above our heads, dancing through blue skies, and the commander of the Unsullied stood upon the highest platform in the plaza, his helmet removed and spear cast aside, to declare, in a loud voice that carried widely, “The masters have surrendered! The city of Meereen is free. Take off your shackles, tear off your collars. We are slaves no more!”

“That’s Grey Worm,” Missandei told me, her voice dripping with excitement. Her small, shy smile broke into an irrepressible grin at the sound of his voice. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation, searching for sight of him quickly. 

She gave a little jump on the bricks, careful not to jolt the bad knee back to injury, seeking above the heads of the Unsullied soldiers and the gathered crowds before finding him, standing only a hundred yards away, on the raised platform erected just outside the pyramid doors. And in finding him, she instantly broke from the safety of our escort, ducking under the guards to race across the plaza to meet him. 

For his part, Grey Worm saw her at nearly the same moment and broke off his speech without a second thought. His stern features went soft and his voice broke on her name, the syllables lost among the shouts of the crowd. The crowds parted for them and Missandei met him halfway up the stone steps, jumping into his arms with little restraint. 

I glanced back at Mama, sharing a smile between us, as we watched Missandei cover her captain’s face in butterfly kisses, kissing every part of him that she could reach.

“Grey Worm! Missandei!” Everyone was whipped into renewed frenzy by the sight of this reunion. There wasn’t a soul in the crowd who didn’t know their story or their names. The children of Meereen would be told the story of what happened in Astapor for generations to come. And they would be told of this day too, when the ancient city declared its liberty for all to hear.

“Look at that!” Mama spoke to me and Aemon, but grabbed my father’s arm too, to get his attention, pointing up towards the top of the Great Pyramid. She was looking up at the bronze Harpy that stood proud and tall upon the apex, the favored emblem of the masters and their forefathers. Strong ropes had been strung around it, tied fast by neck and waist and wing. 

With a great heft and pull, the Unsullied tore that statue down from its gilded perch and the echoing clatter and clang of bronze and copper sliding down the side of the Pyramid quieted the crowd to a hush as we all watched it, our hands raised against fierce sunshine, to see the Harpy tumble down, level after level, end over end, until it fell flat into the sand at the foot of the Pyramid.

Wings broken, bronze cracked.

A moment of silence passed. Across the plaza, I saw Grey Worm running his hand over Missandei’s cheek gently, tracing her scars reverently, and I saw her smile upturned towards him, so open, so _free_ , both of them oblivious to what they’d started in Astapor and what ended here, with that bronze Harpy face-down in the dirt. 

But the crowd knew. 

And an enormous _roar_ of approval went up from all of Meereen, soon harmonized by the screech and howl of Dark Sister and Bearfyre in the skies above. A great applause went up, with whistling and shouts, as the dragons flew directly over our heads, spitting a few dazzling sprays of fire into the blue skies that would cool to cinders before it showered on us below.

The dragons were just showing off. I glanced over my shoulder once again, this time past my mother and father, to catch my brother’s gaze at the back of the procession. Aemon was looking for me too and smirked, rolling his eyes heavenward in heavy agreement. 

_Big show-offs_ , his eyes said plainly.

_They love all this attention_ , my eyes answered back.

I just hoped Dark Sister didn’t fall into a mood because of this. She’d been testy since we left home, remembering the storms too well and how we’d forced them to fly when they were both near dropping from exhaustion. Papa and Missandei rode with me, as they’d both been on her before, and she seemed to take it as an imposition. I think she was jealous that Seadancer would be staying home with Daenielle and Grandfather, free to fly the coast and hunt and dive without any riders at all.

But the weather remained pleasant this time, and after the initial bristling, she didn’t balk at the extra riders. Especially once we reached Meereen, and my wonder and amazement at the gathered crowds below matched her own. Once we landed, both she and Bearfyre seemed intent on giving the multitudes an air show like no other, dipping and diving, twisting and twirling, all around the city.

They were playing. But the masters in the Great Pyramid didn’t know that. They saw dragons come to their city—dragons that had decimated their ancestors, dragons that had torched the docks at Astapor with a single word from me. 

“Outstanding…,” Lord Tyrion had muttered when we first arrived, his tone awestruck, his eyes unable to look away from the dragons, swallowing back his more clever words. The last time I saw the Imp, we were the same height. This time around, he had to look up at me as he asked, “Can you have them fly around the Pyramid?”

“A dragon is not a slave,” I answered curtly, giving him some of my mother’s favorite words, in my father’s favorite tone. I knew enough about Tyrion Lannister to be careful with what I told him. I mentioned, “They do what they want.”

This elicited a low chuckle from Papa, who was standing nearby, sword hand ready, as always, if the initial meeting went sideways. Lord Tyrion had granted him a dark, long-suffering look, “I see you’ve taught your children the way of blunt honesty, Mormont.”

My father shrugged, “Is there another way, Lord Tyrion?”

But Lord Tyrion got his wish anyway. Dark Sister was too intrigued by the man-fashioned mountain rising from the heart of the city, with its sunlit bricks and etched stonework, its dazzling heights and reflective polish, and she made a pass around it anyway. And then another, with Bearfyre following close on her tail. 

Before it toppled to the ground, Dark Sister perched on the Harpy’s bronze wings, outstretching her own wings wide, ten times the size of the idol’s, making a fierce show above the city. 

Under her massive weight, stone and dust within the Pyramid itself must have been displaced, falling from ceilings within the high halls as if the whole thing were under assault. The masters fled their siege, finally throwing themselves at the mercy of the Unsullied, pouring from the pyramid and going to their knees before the slave soldiers, their brightly-colored tokars soon dusted by the dirt of the streets below.

The masters were all descendants of the Ghis Empire. They’d been taught too well what happened when their ancestors made war with Old Valyria and the dragonfire that rained down on their cities, burning stone and cedar until the Bay was nearly an ash bed of bones and blood, leaving behind only soil baked red beneath the hot sun. 

It was not an easy thing to forget, as Valyrian was still spoken throughout Slaver’s Bay, a thousand years later. Including that day the Unsullied dragged the Harpy down from its perch. 

We finally reached the lower levels of the Pyramid, meeting Lord Tyrion and the captain of the Second Sons on the balcony entrance to the palace-like interior. A long, imposing staircase would take us to the Pyramid’s highest perches, leading up to the apex and the great hall. The stairs were many and the walk itself would take over an hour. 

But this was the formal taking of the Great Pyramid, which the crowds had eagerly gathered to witness. 

As we approached Lord Tyrion, the little man unclasped his stubby hands and came forward with a beaming grin, welcoming us. He was the undisputed master of ceremony here. All of this was coordinated at his command. We would now wait until Grey Worm and Missandei joined us, and then begin the climb to feasting and celebration. It was necessary, Lord Tyrion said, to bring closure to months of unrest and to mark a day of celebration that would outlast us all.

_And it’s a good excuse to drink a few bottles of wine too…_

“Lady Mormont, you are most welcome to Meereen,” Lord Tyrion bowed low to my mother, in careful respect. When Papa and I touched down earlier to meet with the Unsullied, Mama had stayed with Aemon, in the air, until the plans were finalized. This was the first time she’d seen Tyrion Lannister in many years. And there was some lingering tension between them, no doubt created when the dwarf came to our house on the Jade Sea all those years ago. 

But my mother accepted his greeting with grace, saying, with just a breathy hint of terseness in her voice, “Lord Tyrion, it’s good to see you.” 

Meanwhile, Daario Naharis’s dark eyes settled on me, with a lascivious look that spoke volumes. We’d been told he had a reputation for appreciating rare beauty in the world, so I suppose I should have been flattered. Before I knew it, the sellsword had reached down and taken my right hand, gallantly lifting it to his lips, and pressing a feathered kiss against my knuckles, before I was able to object.

“Welcome to Meereen, my lady,” he said smoothly, and I nearly smiled at his bold manner. Oh, he was suave. And very handsome. For an older man, at least.

My father’s eyes were trained directly on Daario Naharis, watching the sellsword’s every move. It was an even, measured stare, betraying little, but I knew Papa’s thoughts well enough. His jaw moved tellingly. But he needn’t worry. It took me only two minutes to decide that Daario Naharis was a shallow dandy, and I would never be swayed by any dandy’s garish kiss.

However, I have to admit…

As Daario Naharis released my hand, Arthur Selmy’s features suddenly crossed my mind. Unbidden, unplanned. I hadn’t thought on him since just after Papa and I returned from Port Yhos. So much had happened in between. But now…

My mind suddenly wandered, despite the crowd noise and activity surrounding us, and I wondered where he was and what he was doing at that exact moment. 

And why I could so easily envision Arthur Selmy taking my hand and kissing it instead.

Perhaps Papa _should_ be worried about that. But oh, I certainly wasn’t going to tell him.


	23. The Gods' Favorite Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this little remix of #TeamTarg's greatest hits as much as I enjoyed salzrand drawing a moment I would have _killed_ for in the show ;) I like Daario, I do. He's hilarious. But oh my god, I sooooo wanted Jorah to turn around and just punch him or choke him out. Just. Once. 
> 
> And if you're the same - wish granted :D
> 
> Also, I might have to skip updating next week only because we're about to enter the third act of this book (we're like 8-9 chapters away from the end, I think?) and the next chapter sets something in motion that will carry through until Book 3 and beyond. And because of what happens (*cue ominous music*), I have another two-shot fic that should really be posted same time. 
> 
> So anyway, I'm running a little behind on all of this but still hoping to have it finished by next wknd. If not, definitely the week after <3 <3 <3

**_Daario Naharis_ **

It was a good scrap—the whole campaign. I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy myself.

Those guards in Yunkai gave Grey Worm and me some trouble, that’s true. Looking back, I think we could have used a third sword but what’s life without the thrill of knowing that you could die at any moment, eh?

Fighting back-to-back with a former slave soldier who had no balls and a minimal sense of humor was not how I imagined I’d leave this life, but, in the end, I think it would have been a fine way to go. Grey Worm’s the toughest man with no balls I’ve ever met. No contest.

We triumphed, mostly because the man’s a machine. I got a few hits on them too, but credit where credit’s due. And Grey Worm deserved most of it. But we were _so_ close to death that night, I swear I tasted its true flavor. It made me feel _alive_ , and I found myself craving the next battle, just to hold onto that feeling. 

Unfortunately, the Meereenese slaves heard we were coming and made preparations for our arrival, right under their master’s noses. The city was relatively easy to pluck. More’s the pity. Although we did have to crawl in through the narrow and pitch-black sewers to arm them, so that was something. And getting that sewer smell out of my hair and beard took some heavy perfumes, I have to say. 

But it was worth it. If only to watch those Meereenese masters peek out so timidly, from the tip-top of their Great Pyramid, clutching their fringed tokars, gold medallions and copper belts while their entire world crumbled around them. It gave me pleasure, I can’t deny it.

I’ve never had much love lost on the masters. Not even at the height of performing for them in the fighting pits, when I had them eating off the sharp edge of my knife blade. No, it’s true. A trick for the ladies, in which I’d slice a grape mid-air, catch it on the blade and offer it back to the woman whose token I was destined to wear.

And whose soft, silky arms would delight in my company that same night, after venturing down to the cells to claim the other half of her prize.

But I watched those masters for years, up on their lofty platforms, speaking their bastard Valyrian—as if they were minor gods!—and draping themselves in the wealth of the countryside, while tossing me a copper at the end of a successful fight, flung onto the blood-soaked sand arrogantly.

_Don’t spend it all at once, slave_. Rich men always think they’re so clever. 

I won my freedom fairly and I suppose I couldn’t claim any true abuse at the hands of the masters, not compared to many, but I was being paid _very_ well for this campaign. Still, I might have been tempted to take the job for no money at all.

Best not to tell Tyrion that part.

I was bored, for lack of a better reason. I’d been bored for twenty years, I think. Bored enough that when Mero started talking about how “we should take the job in Astapor for Kraznys and butchering it might be, but coin is coin, and bedslaves in Astapor are so malleable and willing they say they can fuck even after they’ve been torn into ten pieces—”, I found myself lobbing his head off, somewhat casually, before finishing my drink.

It was a long time coming. The Titan’s Bastard had seen better days. His teeth were rotting and he’d started to grow fat, making him slow in skirmishes. Stupid too, but that was always true. Ten years ago, he took Prendahl na Ghezn’s head off his shoulders because he said the co-captain looked at him funny, so…he really should have seen it coming. 

Don’t mourn Mero. He was a bastard, through and through. And he had a distinct lack of appreciation for the things that truly matter.

The thrill of killing a man who wants to kill you first. The joy of fucking a woman who wants to be fucked. And the rare beauty that the world has to offer, found only by seeking it out with a discerning eye. _My_ discerning eye, in most cases.

Two dragons were flying the vaulted skies above Meereen. If that’s not a beautiful sight, I’m afraid my entire life is built on lies.

I was dumbstruck by them, as were we all, staring up at an aerial display that no one else had seen in hundreds of years. Smug satisfaction wound its way up and down my features, as I knew, in that moment, that I’d made the right choice in answering Tyrion’s summons. 

Any choice that ends with dragons on your side has to be the right one.

Honestly, I _always_ make the right choice. Or the right choice finds me. The gods _love_ me. As I told Grey Worm on our way to Meereen, “It’s a lifelong blessing, bestowed on _this one’s_ extremely worthy head.” 

No lies. They treat me like their favored son. And given that I don’t know who my father is…well, it’s a distinct possibility.

I wouldn’t put it past my mother to sleep with a god. The woman was a self-proclaimed slut.

But she was beautiful too. And I don’t just say that as her son. Beauty is _not_ in the eye of the beholder, don’t let the poets deceive you. It’s completely rare and fine and I’ve got an eye for it. 

Meereen was a beautiful city. Ancient and glorious. The dragons were beautiful creatures. Dangerous and fierce. And Jorah and Daenerys Mormont’s eldest daughter was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life. From Braavos to the Southern Seas, all the world over.

The girl took after the mother, who was pretty enough for a woman who’d seen four decades and borne three children. I’ll give her that. From across the feast table, I considered her critically, noting her attributes but knowing that she would have interested me _far_ more if I’d met her twenty years ago.

I might have said as much to her husband, as we walked up the pyramid. I’m not sure why I did that, knowing the reaction it might provoke. 

Ser Jorah Mormont of Bear Island. The man was a _fucking_ legend in fighting circles. We had a man in the Second Sons who started in the Golden Company when he was just a boy and saw Mormont in action. And all those tales from across the sea, about what happened the night the dead came to Castle Black?

I’ve never put much stock in tall tales, but there were dragons flying around the pyramid so…what did I know? The man was imposing, if getting on in years. Just based on the way his hand rested on the hilt of his sword, I could tell he might best me in the sparring yard. I considered—he might’ve been the third sword Grey Worm and I could have used that night in Yunkai when we almost got ourselves killed. 

Yet, Ser Jorah was too…honorable for my tastes. I saw how he looked at me when I kissed his daughter’s hand. My lips couldn’t resist the pleasure, just as my mouth couldn’t resist goading him later. 

I even waited until the others had gone up a little further, asking Ser Jorah to hang back and help me shut the dusty, massive doors behind us. 

And then I asked him, “How’d an old man like you end up with a wife like that?”

He’d taken an instant dislike to me. That was obvious. I couldn’t blame him. In his shoes, I’d likely dislike me too. He seemed like he might ignore me at first, thinking the question was asked in bad faith. He wasn’t wrong.

But perhaps my words struck a nerve, for he changed his mind, answering honestly, “The gods only know.”

“And is it true what they say?”

“What do they say?”

“You’ve been riding a dragon for years,” I took no pains to mask my ribald tone. It’s second-nature. I continued, making my point terribly clear, “Are they as wild as they say?”

He ignored me that time, less than interested in conversing with me further. He was a lord before he came to Essos. Pride and honor and all that. Not one to discuss the habits of his marriage bed with a perfect stranger.

But the victory had made me bold and reckless and I had lingering energy that I wanted to expel. I was itching for either a fight or a fuck. 

“I suppose I could ask your daughter…,” I shrugged, almost innocently.

And _gods damn_ , that old man was fast. His powerful hand was iron-gripped around my throat and I was slammed back against the pyramid stone before I could react. And he was strong, like a fucking bear. They always said he was strong but I guess I underestimated that strength, struggling for breath as my windpipe was crushed back in my throat.

Here’s hoping I’m that strong in twenty years.

“If you say one more word about my daughter, if you even _think_ it, I’ll tear your tongue from your mouth and feed it to Dark Sister,” Ser Jorah said, in a dangerous tone, deep and raspy and very serious. He regarded me squarely, “Do you understand?”

“I…understand,” I choked out, before he released me. He gave me a grim look before shaking his head, like a disapproving father. I had a feeling his own son hadn’t received as many of these looks in his entire life as I had in the last five minutes.

In a way, I was proud of myself for this? Blame the gods. They fashioned me this way.

“You didn’t get much discipline as a child, did you?” Ser Jorah mused, reading me like a book.

“None,” I smirked on the simple word and simpler truth, while rubbing at the bruised cords in my neck.

To be honest, I wasn’t offended. If anything, this made the daughter more of a challenge and I do like my challenges. 

But there was other beauty to note at that victory feast as well, which I was pleased to enjoy. As we rejoined the others, I took a seat between Tyrion and Aemon Mormont, directly facing Jeorgianna and Missandei.

Pretty Missandei. I remembered her clearly from that day at Kraznys’s palace, as I found her waiting outside the Hall and listening at her master’s door. Her strange mix of timidity and defiance that day intrigued me, as did her dark eyes. When I’d tipped her chin up and looked into those eyes, I saw none of this in our futures. I’m no fortune-teller, but you’d think a revolutionary spirit would shine out more overtly.

But maybe it wasn’t any grand ideas of revolution that drove her to do it. Maybe it was just exhaustion. The sudden, unexpected break of steel, after too many years away from the home forge. Breaking on the last and worst of a hundred thousand words that weren’t her own. 

She spoke only her own words now, almost all directed at Grey Worm, who she laughed with and talked with, over Meereenese delicacies and copious amounts of Tyrion’s wine. At the head of the table, Grey Worm, my stalwart and grim-faced companion, was smiling.

Of all the things I’d seen today, that one might be the most miraculous.

Tyrion poured out glass after glass for his guests, making sure the wine flowed freely. He was a generous host, even here, in a palace that wasn’t his. For such a little man, he filled the room with his grand presence. He moved about the space easily, and took on the role of master of ceremonies seamlessly.

They say he inherited this talent from the father he killed. His sense of humor?—the gods only know where that came from. 

“I’m in need of a new joke. My wife's grown tired of hearing mine,” Tyrion mentioned at one point, looking around the table for likely candidates. He narrowed his eyes at young Aemon Mormont, but spared the boy whatever suggestive words might have been primed on his lips. He was a man with a tongue as loose as my own, but I’d noticed Tyrion was far more careful with what he said to the Mormont children.

I respected the choice—those two young people had dragons at their beck and call. One of which screeched out from the balcony soon after, almost as a reminder.

But Tyrion would never give up the chance to needle and tease the elder Mormonts, looking at Ser Jorah and Daenerys with a crooked grin and a muttered, “No, I don’t suspect either one of you are the joke-telling kind. Except about throwing heads in the sea, perhaps?”

He didn’t wait for their replies, expecting glowers and patient sighs. Daenerys’s hand went to her husband’s, but I noticed she grinned a little into her drink, as she raised the glass to her lips.

Tyrion’s gaze wandered further. To me, he said only, “Your jokes would be a little too off color for present company, Naharis.” He gave a nod to Jeorgianna after saying this, raising his glass in respect. She raised it back. 

She seemed amused by the Imp. Amused by me too. Which was fine.

I would have preferred attraction to amusement, of course. But amusement is a starting point too, yes? And there’s no fun in the chase, if it’s over at once.

_Or if ends with your pretty head in my dragon’s mouth._ Jeorgianna’s blue eyes were the same color and shade as her father’s. And I swear her voice echoed in my head with almost Jorah Mormont’s exact tone.

“So that leaves Grey Worm or Missandei of Naath,” Tyrion rubbed his hands together, looking between them both. He clucked his tongue at the Unsullied commander, as Grey Worm’s smile had already faded dead away, at the mere mention of telling jokes.

I’d been on the road with that man for months. I could confirm for Tyrion—jokes were not common in the ranks of the Unsullied.

But Tyrion seemed to figure this out on his own, settling on Missandei, at last.

“Yes, Missandei, _you_ ,” Tyrion confirmed, grinning devilishly as he picked up his wine glass once more. “Tell us a joke, oh Liberator of Meereen.” 

Missandei pursed her lips at the title he bestowed on her. She looked like she might refuse flat out but the wine had loosened her tongue, and her mood was pure felicity, and had been, since she and Grey Worm embraced in the plaza. Her eyes flickered away briefly, as if remembering something and she smiled softly as she recalled it, licking her lips once before granting Tyrion his request.

“Two translators are on a sinking ship,” she said, holding her wine glass in her lap with both hands. She paused, trying to remember the rest. And then grinned softly as she did, “The first says, ‘do you know how to swim?’ and the second says, ‘no, but I can shout for help in nineteen languages.’”

On the punchline, she bit her bottom lip shyly, while the sides of her mouth continued to curl upwards. Then even higher, her face breaking into the widest grin I’d ever seen on any woman, on either side of the sea. It was such an _awful_ joke, and I think she knew it. But I think she loved it anyway. And her joy was infectious, hitting Grey Worm first as she glanced his way. His smile reappeared at her words, to grow and grow, until he snorted out a thoroughly undignified laugh.

It wasn’t the joke. It was her reaction to it. And Grey Worm’s to her. And so it passed on to all of us, one after another. Jeorgianna and Aemon both fell into giggles and chuckles, with their parents and me not far beyond. 

And then finally Tyrion, who started to say “Wha—?” with a furrowed brow, before he fell into the same fit of giddy, unplanned laughter, tears streaming down his face, his sides shaking so much he spilled his wine all over the old stones.


	24. Candlelight and Turquoise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said last time, we're about to enter Act III. So just...brace yourselves 😘
> 
> And also brace yourselves for more pretty salzrand illustrations. Yes, illustration _s_. Plural :) Because she's the BEST <3 Starring happy!Jorleesi and Mama/Little Bear bonding moments. Askdklskflalkdjl. ❤️

**_Daenerys_**

“You seem to get on well with Grey Worm?” I said to Jorah, from behind a wood-and-bronze dressing screen in our lavish bedchamber. For our stay in Meereen, we’d been given a full wing of grand apartments, the former residence of rich masters so recently thrown out of their own Pyramid.

I’d been born a king’s daughter but I’d never seen such riches and luxury in my life, not even in Illyrio Mopatis’s fine palace in Pentos. 

This was the kind of wealth that collects over a thousand years, passed down from generation to generation. Every chamber in the upper levels of the Pyramid was trimmed with bronze, gilded in gold, white alabaster, smooth silks, velvet cushions, rich perfumes, elaborate tapestries and pillows and mattresses stuffed with soft down. 

Jorah was currently perched on one of those fine mattresses, one that dwarfed ours at home, three times over. He was still dressed as we’d only recently retired for the evening, and was now waiting on me. 

I was changing into a blue-and-white gown that Tyrion Lannister had sent up for me, as a gift. We had a few more days of celebration and mingling ahead of us, and the dwarf apparently thought I could use a change of wardrobe. Never one to play favorites, he’d sent up something for Jeorgianna as well. All expensive fabrics, silk and samite, with pleasing lines and garish colors. 

“With the Imp’s eternal gratitude…” read the note, which brought a small smirk to my lips.

Tyrion was as facetious as ever, but generous. He was eternally fond of sarcasm, but somehow able to manage sincerity too? He took great pleasure in gilding the lily at every turn and gods, he loved to hear himself talk. During the last week, I often found myself watching Jorah’s face as the dwarf chattered on, amused by the myriad of long-suffering expressions passing my husband’s features.

But Tyrion had surprised me this trip. 

He showed restraint, at least with my children, watching his tongue and attempting no manipulations that I could see. He was gracious to me and deferred to Jorah. I wondered if some of this was to make up for that night so long ago now, when I told him to get out of our house and never come back. 

I suppose I said something about having Jorah throw his head in the harbor as well. He mentions it often enough. Apparently, I made a deep impression, even deeper than I meant to…

Or realized I could. 

Jorah has told me that I have a certain tone in my voice, not often used, that could bring grand cities to heel and emperors to their knees. But I think he’s likely speaking nonsense. His eyes and ears are not exactly objective when it comes to me.

I’d just wanted Lord Varys and Tyrion Lannister to understand that my family would not be their plaything. That we were not to be used as chess pieces in a game that Jorah and I had no interest in playing.

In the end, I made my point very clear. I had no idea if they’d listen. But Tyrion soon gave up the game as well. I felt some kinship with him in that regard. And a little more over our pair of _terrible_ fathers—so he needn’t have bothered with the gifts.

They were really too much. I suppose I could have interpreted the gesture less charitably, as a blunt comment on our sparser style of living. But surely, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to call us provincial and plain, not with my husband towering over him, or our two, very large dragons flying the skies above his head?

When I mentioned this to him, tipping my head just slightly and asking the question directly, he agreed at once, clearing his throat before replying, “Of course not, my lady.” 

I liked my own clothes fine, but I’d humor the little man. He was in such high spirits—enjoying the company, and happily taking on all the glory that Grey Worm and Missandei shied away from, both too busy reveling in their reunion to bother with accolades. It seemed almost cruel to refuse him. 

Not that he’d notice. He’d gone into the hill country this afternoon, to take possession of some vineyard. Now he and Daario Naharis were singing bawdy tavern songs down in the deeper bowels of the Pyramid, drunk on the sweet wine from that vineyard. Every now and again, we caught an echo of their mixed voices, raised in song, bouncing off old stones, a distant hum that spoke of good cheer and rowdy mirth.

Whenever they started to get too loud, we heard another echo, coming from nearby apartments. The butt of an iron spear tapping the stones sharply—a not-so-subtle command from Grey Worm and Missandei’s chambers to kindly shut the hell up.

Jorah chuckled lightly upon hearing Grey Worm’s spear hit the stones, appreciating the man’s message to Tyrion Lannister and Daario Naharis. 

Jorah liked Grey Worm. I could tell. And they’d spent some time together today, down with the soldiers. As in Astapor and Yunkai, the Unsullied would soon begin handing over control of the city to a council formed with representatives appointed by district. Most of these representatives would be former slaves, but a few had ties to the older families. 

There would be tension and the transition had to be handled delicately. But a city held together by force is no sustainable thing. It festers, it rots. If it was to survive, Meereen would have to muddle its way through to a new way of life. 

“He’s a capable commander and a steady soldier,” Jorah replied to my guess. “He knows his own strengths, and his weaknesses. There were some in the streets today who were calling out ‘King Grey Worm’, but he paid them no mind. He has no interest in seizing power, even if they laid the crown in his lap.”

“Neither does Missandei,” I answered, poking my head out the side of the screen just briefly, as I pulled the sleeves of that dress over my shoulders. “She told me she’d rather not stay in Slaver’s Bay. She wants to start fresh, somewhere far from here. But I think Grey Worm will follow her anywhere.”

“He will,” Jorah agreed, nodding without hesitation. He was so confident and I gave him a look, wondering how he would know. He explained, with a little shrug, “We saw you both talking up on the balcony when we were down in the streets. He said little of his feelings but asked me to translate a word for him in the common tongue…”

“Oh…?” I wondered, even more curious now. “What word?”

“‘Precious’,” he said, his melodious voice curling along the edges of those two syllables in a way that made my knees go just a little weak. For I could guess what, or rather who, he might have used as an example to teach Grey Worm the meaning of that word. 

His gentle, loving smile confirmed it. And I felt my cheeks warm at Jorah’s indirect compliment, as always. After returning his smile, I ducked back behind the screen to finish dressing. It didn’t take long. 

“Okay, I’m coming out,” I warned him. 

I usually wouldn’t hide behind a screen to change. We had no secrets. He knew every inch of my body, by sight and by feel. But the cut of this expensive dress was flattering and deserved a grand reveal.

Tyrion had an eye for understated opulence and had paid attention to my style. The dress was lovely. A sleeveless, swirling blue samite overlay with a skirt of pleated, white silk, that rustled very lightly when I walked. I didn’t have a mirror behind the screen but just the way the skirt fell at my waist and the way the bodice fit to my curves, I felt royal in that dress.

This was the kind of dress I would have worn daily, had my father lived and I’d grown up as a princess in King’s Landing.

Jorah said it outright, rasping out a husky, “Your Grace…,” almost without meaning to. And it was less tease in his tone, more just wonder. His blue eyes approved Tyrion’s choice, following the lines of the dress, moving from the neckline to the hem and back again.

I liked the stunned look on his face, struck speechless at the sight of me, his handsome features going soft beneath the candlelight glow in our chamber. 

I moved towards him slowly, taking my time, turning once so he could see the back, and then swaying a little, hands locked just behind me in the manner of a young maiden, as I liked the way the skirt whispered across stone. But soon, I joined him on the bed, lifting the skirt and crawling over him, hands going around his neck, while my knees sunk against the soft mattress, settling easily in my bear’s lap.

“You would’ve been a beautiful queen, Daenerys. The kind they write songs about,” he murmured, as our noses nuzzled against one another. “I almost regret depriving the world of sights like this.”

“No you don’t…,” I shook my head at him, knowing better, grinning wider. 

“No, I don’t,” he admitted, grinning back, before beckoning me closer for a slow, candlelit kiss.

* * *

I thought fondly on Jorah’s kiss the next afternoon and found myself daydreaming a little, right in the middle of a Meereenese market street, recalling all that followed that kiss. That expensive gown was left in a crumpled heap on the stone floor overnight, but it bore the indignity well. Not a wrinkle to be found in its rich fabric the next morning.

The spiced night air and the candlelight and the echo of bawdy tavern songs (I _swore_ I heard Tyrion and Daario singing at least one verse of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” down in their drunken merriment) and the celebratory atmosphere of Meereen—I’ll blame our spontaneity on these things. 

Even if it wasn’t fair to lay blame elsewhere. Even if the beach at home could tell stories to the Great Pyramid that would cause both Jorah and I to blush scarlet red. The one about the heat-spun night Aemon was conceived, in particular…

“Mama?” Aemon broke me from my reverie, catching my attention and tipping his head towards the merchant stall that we stood beside. 

I snapped away from my memories immediately, as we were lingering in the midst of a crowded market street, and standing too long in one place was a sure way to be jostled and hustled along, carried off by regular patrons who were in a hurry. Aemon asked me, “Do you want any peaches? He says they’re from that same grove in Yi Ti that you love so much.”

I took a step forward to inspect the peaches myself, feeling the fuzzy skin and firmness of the fruit. I glanced up at the merchant, rather doubtful, as I didn’t know the Yi Tish grove owner to sell west of the Jade Gates. And I noticed the twinkling sparkle in the merchant’s eye. He was anticipating an easy sale. He could be lying, using an off-hand comment from Aemon to draw us in. 

But oh, I’d risk it. I did love peaches. 

They always made me think of Jorah coming home in the evening. And Aemon’s stuffed bear…which was likely propped up, lonely and wistful for days gone by, sitting patiently in the window sill of Aemon’s bedroom, waiting on us to come home. 

_Home._

As much as I enjoyed the sights and sounds of this grand old city, I was more than ready to go home. I missed Daenielle _dreadfully_ , and would smother her in hugs and kisses as soon as I walked through the villa’s red door. I missed the vernal scents of my gardens, the crash of the sea, and even my father-in-law’s curmudgeonly growls, when I told him too much salt isn’t healthy for a man his age.

_Salt, ale—anything else to add to the list, Daenerys?_

I think Jorah was ready to go home too, having had enough of Daario Naharis’s leering glances towards our eldest daughter and Tyrion’s smart mouth. We’d stay a few more days, for Jeorgianna and Aemon’s sakes. They deserved this trip, and the attention and love that the grateful people of this city were happy to bestow upon them.

Even here, down in the busy Meereenese markets, where I noticed a little girl in faded turquoise followed us cautiously, only a few feet behind, holding a wooden ball in her hands and looking up at my son with a wide-eyed mixture of interest and awe.

Jorah was always so worried about Jeorgianna, but lately, I’d started to muse on all the hearts our son would break, as he grew tall and handsome as his father.

Aemon had dragged me down here to wander and explore, while Jorah and Jeorgianna stayed up at the Pyramid. Tyrion had requested Dark Sister’s presence for a potentially tense meeting with Hizdahr zo Loraq, the son of good, wise and now defeated masters, appointed by the wealthier families to plead their case to the victors. 

Grey Worm and the Unsullied were willing to listen to the man, as they’d lost their bloodlust after Astapor and had little interest in mass executing those they’d conquered. After all, they weren’t masters. But Tyrion thought the dragon might be a healthy reminder that the meeting was not to be misinterpreted as renewed negotiations. 

“Yes, get us two,” I nodded to Aemon, and nearly clucked my tongue, again, at the fact that I was forced to look up at him when I said this. 

He’d grown another inch in the last month, at least. My gods, he was growing up so fast. Where was the little boy I’d carried through the freezing corridors of Castle Black, pushing those red-blond curls out of his face, bouncing him on my hip, gently begging him to quit pestering our uncle with questions?

“How about three?” he countered, snatching up a third before I could object. 

He threw the third peach high in the air and immediately began juggling the fruit like a festival performer. The merchant was impressed with Aemon’s natural skill and clapped his hands, “Ah!” So did the little girl in turquoise, holding her wooden ball beneath one arm. She took the opportunity to push her tangled hair back from her dirty face and then clapped a few times, with a strange little smile hovering over her thin lips. She seemed enamored by Aemon, watching his every move.

“If you drop the fruit, it’s ruined,” I warned him, not as impressed by my boy’s antics, having seen them play out tragically with eggs in the kitchen at home. I just rolled my eyes, reaching out for my peach. He handed it over with a grin reminiscent of his father, while continuing to juggle the other two with one hand.

“You know, I don’t mind Meereen,” he mentioned a few minutes later, as we wandered back towards the Pyramid, taking our time. “But I’ll be glad to be home.” 

At his words, I reached over and squeezed Aemon’s arm fondly, remembering him say something similar at Castle Black all those years ago. 

_When will we go home, Mama?_

_As soon as the sunrise, little bear…_

But he wasn’t as tall back then, nor his voice so deep. It was starting to change, settling on dulcet tones that were very similar in cadence to Jorah’s.

“Did you see how that sellsword keeps trying to win Jeorgianna’s favor?” Aemon continued, with a light laugh. “Papa’s going to kill him if he’s not careful.”

“That’s another reason we should probably get your father home,” I allowed, as Aemon cast a quick glance behind us, back to the little girl in turquoise. She was still following us at a short distance, somewhat shyly. 

She was little more than a street urchin, wearing no shoes and all that uncombed hair. Where was her mother? Maybe she was hungry? Aemon evidently thought the same thing, tossing her the third peach. She caught it with both hands, but dropped her wooden ball in the process. The ball hit the stones and rolled away, trailing amongst the feet of the crowd. The little girl’s expression fell instantly, her hazel eyes blinked, crestfallen.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it!” Aemon told her, gallantly. And he broke off from me to collect the girl’s lost toy. 

It had rolled only a few feet away, and Aemon was naturally agile. He’d be back at my side in a matter of seconds.

So I turned, distracted by another stall, this one hanging with silk veils and colored scarves. There was a green scarf hanging along the side of the silk merchant’s cart, with a short fringe that would suit Daenielle very well. I asked the merchant to reach up and bring it down for me.

“It’s fine silk, m’lady, spun by shimmering silkworms in the mountains around Samyriana…,” the merchant-girl promised, as she laid the silky fabric over my forearms.

“Aemon, what do you think of this?” I asked my son, but was met with silence. 

I half-turned, intending to draw his attention away from whatever new distraction had caught his fancy, “Aemon?”

_Aemon…?_

Aemon wasn’t beside me. Aemon wasn’t in the street. “Aemon?” I called again, a little louder this time, but there was no reply. 

I don’t remember handing that scarf back to the merchant-girl, but I remember with perfect clarity how my feet took a step from her stall, and then another, my eyes searching the bustling crowd, as my senses were suddenly flooded by a cold dread. Sounds muffled around me, the sights of the market went hazy and unfocused.

 _He’s wandering. He’s found some new marvel to catch his eye_ …I told myself, calming my nerves, as my thoughts were jumping to the worst conclusions, too fast.

I couldn’t find him. I _couldn’t_ find him. 

The dread growing up through my heart turned thorny and tangled, desperate and wicked, growing, growing, growing. My eyes flickered quickly up and down the entire street, searching face after face, all strangers, none of them familiar. 

Until they happened to fall on that urchin-child once more, still hovering nearby. 

The little girl in faded turquoise, strands of her tangled hair falling into wide, hazel eyes. She was standing all alone, just across the street, with my son’s peach in her hands. She was staring at me, seemingly waiting for me to find her among the crowd. And when my eyes found hers, they _stopped_. 

_What…?_

She opened her mouth and took a greedy bite of that peach, her eyes never wavering from mine as her teeth sunk into the fruit’s flesh. And then she spit the mouthful out onto the street.

Her tongue gave her away. 

It was blue, as blue as crushed shade of the evening. The same blue that Jorah told me stains the lips and tongues of the warlocks of Qarth. The child sneered at me, and then dashed away, sandals hitting the dusty bricks, little hands trailing the brick wall of an alleyway she immediately ducked into.

I felt a strangled, terrible cry bubble up in my throat, and I was now pushing through the crowd like a mad woman, trying to reach that false child.

But she was gone before I could reach her, the alley was narrow, short and _utterly_ deserted. I spun around, eyes searching vainly. She was gone, just like that.

And so was Aemon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😱


	25. The Tears We Bear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this week kinda got away from me. Sorry about the delay but I've thrown in some S1 Jorleesi 😍 and salzrand has thrown in a gorgeous family-sized bear hug to soften the sad feeeeeeeels 😭😍 so hopefully, worth the wait <3
> 
> You are the best readers, bar none. Much love to all. Xo

**_Jorah_ **

Once, a long time ago, I rode back from the city of Qohor to rejoin Drogo’s khalasar on the road to Vaes Dothrak. 

I met up with them before the holy city, only a day’s ride from the famous stallions, cast in bronze, tangling over the entrance to the city, teeth bared and hooves raised. A Dothraki horde is easy to spot moving through the countryside and I found them with little trouble, taking a moment on the hill above the procession before riding below. 

I spotted Daenerys within seconds, as her silver hair nearly matched the mane of her snow-white mare. And both stood out vibrantly against the dusty steppes and all that dusky, Dothraki brown from miles away.

She was riding a ways back from her khal and his bloodriders, as was expected, with Rakharo just in front of her and Irri and the other handmaids walking a little behind. Daenerys cast a long glance over her shoulder, her eyes flickering over the entire khalasar and further, to the empty road and all that long, ghost grass swaying beyond.

They’d passed through the denser parts of the Great Grass Sea and now rode by rockier, dustier paths, smelling of desert heat, dusty herbs and horses. I couldn’t see her expression from the hillside but the somewhat forlorn tilt of her head and the way she kept looking back… 

She seemed wistful and unsure—and I considered that perhaps she was longing to ride back to Pentos and pretend all of this was just a bad dream. 

In these past months, she’d grown stronger and more resilient. She’d stood up to her brother, tamed her husband and embraced the role of the Silver Khaleesi, but she was still a young woman trying to navigate a savage world that had no tolerance for weakness or a gentle heart.

Much later, she told me that she was looking back for _me_ , growing anxious at my continued absence, having expected my return a little earlier.

But even without knowing her reasons, I remember something quivered in my heart upon seeing her on the road, alone amongst so many, a silver lotus flower in a sea of brown mud. I was tempted to turn my horse around and gallop all the way back to Qohor and tell that little bird of Varys’s that I’d fed him pure lies. That the princess carried _no_ child, that she was _no_ threat. That I’d lost her somewhere in the Great Grass Sea, like the bumbling fool I was, and would no longer be able to provide information on her whereabouts or even whether she still lived. 

_The princess is with child_ …my own words, pressed against a scroll. The mere thought of those words turns my stomach, even now, twenty years later.

That day, she smiled broadly when she saw me, as I dug my heels against my horse’s flanks, urging him down the rocky hills to the well-worn road, soon falling into easy step with her silver mare.

“I hoped you’d be back today,” she told me, hiding none of her happiness at my return. She almost teased me over my tardiness, pursing her lips once before adding, “You took your time though.”

There was no suspicion in her voice, not a trace of anything but pure _trust_. My heart tore at itself, shredding, cutting, waging a war that I didn’t understand. I hadn’t yet admitted my feelings for her to anyone, least of all myself. 

No, not then. But soon.

“Aye, princess,” I replied, swallowing hard. I couldn’t hold her sweet, innocent gaze, unwilling to match it, dropping my unworthy eyes to the road before us. But I meant it when I said, “I apologize that I couldn’t be here sooner.”

“It’s no matter,” she answered, too young and too forgiving, with that pretty smile going soft and reaching the sparkle in her violet eyes. “You’re here now.” 

And then she gave me all the news of the khalasar that I’d missed while I was away. Doreah and Jhiqui’s latest gossip, Rakharo’s newfound quest to find a suit of armor. He remained unconvinced that an arakh would be unable to pierce the steel, at least wielded by a skilled Dothraki, and wished to try it for himself. 

Perhaps later, I’d don my own breastplate and show him the folly of his thinking, as our theoretical lesson by the campfire apparently didn’t take.

But for now, I was content to remain in Daenerys’s company, completely forgetting to ask about her brother, the man I’d sworn my sword to. It was likely too much to hope that he’d abandoned the khalasar and returned to Pentos during my absence. I suppose he must have been walking at the rear of the horde, with the slaves and the unclean, grumbling to himself over the many injustices and indignities poured upon his kingly head. 

I didn’t think of Viserys often those days. Soon, I wouldn’t think of him at all.

When we stopped to make camp, I helped Daenerys down from her horse, as had become habit during the journey. My large hands grasped her bare waist, noting how it had swelled, even in the short while I was away. There was no question that she was carrying a child. Her belly curved gently beneath those flimsy Dothraki skins, the babe still small but growing steadily. Soon enough, it would be cumbersome for her to ride.

Dothraki women were known to stay on their horses until the hour they gave birth. But Daenerys had been riding for only a few months. She adapted quickly but she still struggled with much of this new life. Would Drogo expect her to continue on, as if she were a true daughter of the horselords? Would he risk her health, and the child’s, in that way?

At the mere idea, I felt something fierce stir inside me. It was far stronger than the uneasy but manageable regret that seemed to follow me during the long miles from Qohor, whispering in my father’s gruff, damning voice: _What have you done, Jorah?_

I’d grown used to ignoring my father’s voice, thinking I’d gone too far and betrayed too much to ever find my way back. But this new feeling was all-consuming—a compulsion to protect her, a duty to keep her safe. 

It was the first time I felt the impulse to get her away from this place, to lift her back on that horse and get astride myself, taking up the reins and leading her as far away from Vaes Dothrak and the western plots that would surely be set in motion as soon as my note was received in King’s Landing.

_The princess is with child…_

_What have you done, Jorah?_

_I want to go home. This is the only way to go home._

_She wants to go home too. Would you deny her that? This kind, lovely girl who looks at you with such openness, such trust, such…_

I buried those thoughts, in the shallowest of graves. 

They would rise up again soon. They would demand a reckoning when Viserys turned his blade on his sister and when that false wine-seller attempted to poison her drink. They would stand steadfast when Khal Drogo’s wound festered and he fell from his horse, never to get back on again. 

But that day, we hadn’t yet reached Vaes Dothrak. And my thoughts were still muddled, hardly able to be expressed. 

I distracted myself by the feel of her swelling form under my hands, wondering if she was happy that she would soon be a mother? Or did the thought fill her with dread? Or doubt? Or perhaps she didn’t think on it at all?

Her smile went shy as my hands came away. She knew I noticed the change in her body and by the way my gaze lingered, perhaps she guessed my questions. But she said only, “I’m glad you’re back, Ser Jorah”, before rejoining her handmaidens.

Later, she came and found me by the fire, sitting down heavily on the log beside me. She’d been wandering the camp, unsettled. 

She told me that she was nervous about the dosh khaleen and the ceremony to come. Irri had told her that she would have to consume a stallion’s heart before the assembled khalasar and she didn’t think she could do it.

“But I don’t want to disappoint him,” she muttered, fearful that she would.

“Drogo could never be disappointed in you,” I assured her, with a kindly chuckle. She shouldn’t doubt herself so much. She’d won the savage and brutal horselord over, completely. There was no question on that score. I’d never seen a Dothraki so charmed by one of his wives, or so willing to listen to a woman. Especially one he’d bought. 

“I don’t mean Drogo,” she replied, her voice going tender and maternal, her hand sliding over her burgeoning waist, covering the spot where her son grew.

That’s when I knew. From the look in her eyes, I knew that she loved her child. She _loved_ him, even before he was born. And unconventionally as she may have come to this motherhood, she _wanted_ to be his mother, to fight for him and protect him and love him, forever if she could. 

Young though she was, blood of the dragon though she might be, she suddenly reminded me so much of the mother bears that I’d watched as a boy, leading their little cubs through rushing streams and the meadowlands, watching them tussle in the ferns and heather, showing them the bounty of blackberry and raspberry bushes, growing like weeds on the wild hillsides of Bear Island.

She would love all her children the same. Fiercely, deeply, unconditionally. I knew it back then, sitting beside her at that Dothraki campfire, breaking a piece of kindling and tossing it into orange flames…

Even if I had no notion or inkling that the children in question would be _my_ children too. 

Or that someone would try to steal our children from us years later, while our backs were turned and our attention distracted, in a faithless place, far from home.

“Jorah, I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s…,” Daenerys was clutching at my shirt, weeping in my arms, holding on tight, her voice muffled and desperate. She needed me to be strong but I was unsure how to comfort her, my own fears twisted up and eating me from the inside out. 

_Aemon, my boy, where are you?_

As soon as she returned from the market, I knew something was wrong. My heart sank at the desolate expression gracing her tear-stained face. She rushed to me and told me all, her words tumbling over themselves, her voice breaking on the terrible news she brought, begging me to find our missing son. 

Grey Worm and I searched everywhere in the market streets. The Unsullied and the Second Sons swept the city. Tyrion Lannister’s mouth was emptied of clever words and he showed himself a true friend to us, organizing the search party without a second thought, paying any expense, seeking any crumb of information.

But the search was in vain. Night came and morning followed. Aemon was gone, without a trace, without a whisper left behind. He had vanished and we were left grasping at empty air, a dozen unknowns, trying to understand how this happened and where he might be and why…?

The next day, we were gathered in the Pyramid, waiting for news that might _never_ come, useless, helpless. Missandei comforted Jeorgianna, granting her encouraging words and soft smiles. Daario Naharis had the grace to stay quiet, perched on the stone staircase, his light-hearted manner subdued and his knife at rest in his hands. Tyrion and Grey Worm discussed possible reasons for the abduction, and were attempting to compose a list of disgruntled masters who might have arranged it. 

The list was long. But we’d received no ransom note. We’d been given no list of demands.

Why had they taken him? And who? No one could tell us.

Sniffling just a little, Jeorgianna took a half-step away from Missandei, while still keeping hold of the woman’s steadying arm. Her eyes were as bloodshot as her mother’s—none of us had slept—but she tried for optimism, always our sweet girl, 

“Bearfyre will find him, Mama,” she promised, holding onto that promise like a lifeline, despite recognizing a fog that seemed to be infecting the dragons. Bearfyre knew that Aemon was gone, but seemed at a loss as to where to find him. Which might mean that…

But Jeorgianna was stubborn in her faith, “He’ll lead us to Aemon, wherever he his. The dragons always know where we are. Dark Sister and I can ride out again tonight and…”

“No!” Daenerys immediately lifted her head from my chest to reach out for Jeorgianna, blindly, through tears that wouldn’t stop, beckoning her closer. 

She took our daughter’s hand and pulled her towards us. Missandei released her to our keeping, giving me a sad smile, with sympathy etched up and down her features. I loosened my grip around Daenerys to make room for Jeorgianna too, while Daenerys’s hand drifted up to cradle Jeorgianna’s cheek. “No, I won’t lose both of you. I _can’t_. And whoever took him may want you as well. I don’t want you out of my sight until we know who took him, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Jeorgianna nodded quickly at her mother’s dire tone, blinking back the renewed onslaught of her own tears. Jeorgianna rarely felt fear, but Daenerys’s distress was too poignant, and spread to all of us.

Jeorgianna’s voice was strained, as she looked up at me, knowing I didn’t have the answer but hoping her father could make it all better anyway, “But where is he, Papa?”

_Gods, lass, if only I knew…_

I didn’t answer her and just hugged both of my girls close as we attempted to understand why this had happened and what to do next, hoping against all hope that Aemon was alive and that whoever took him would show themselves quickly, as we were currently faced with no more than shadows in a mist.

And I couldn’t fight shadows. I couldn’t hunt them down and strangle them with my bare hands.

We didn’t have to wait long. 

Within the hour, a sealed message slid into the chamber, appearing from under the arcades forming the outer halls, skirting on grey stones. A pitter-patter of feet echoed down the Pyramid, loudly and with speed. The owner of those footsteps didn’t show themselves and disappeared like smoke, despite Daario Naharis dashing out into the hall as soon as that missive appeared, attempting to seize the messenger before they escaped.

He returned only seconds later, meeting my expectant gaze grimly. He gave a curt shake of his head and said he saw nothing, despite the physical impossibility that the messenger could come and go so quickly. I believed him. And after reading the contents of that message, there was no doubt.

For we weren’t dealing with the masters of Slaver’s Bay.

The turquoise seal was embossed with the Qarthian symbol for Thirteen, even though the Thirteen were all gone, murdered years ago by Xaro Xhoan Daxos and the shifty warlocks who aligned with him, granting him a kingship over the city that continued to this day. 

Indeed, it appeared that those blue-tongued sorcerers were behind Aemon’s disappearance, although their true reasons remained unclear, shrouded in their usual brand of unhinged madness and murky waters. 

I bent and picked up the message from the stones, breaking the seal and turning the missive towards Daenerys, so we might read it together. Afterwards, we passed the parchment to Jeorgianna, who read its unnerving lines aloud for the rest of them:

“ _The House of the Undying invites you to Qarth, the greatest city that ever was or will be._

_We would be so pleased to host the Mother and Father of Dragonriders at the House of the Undying. Your son already indulges in its many mysteries. Come!_

_Come to the House of the Undying…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously. Don't worry about Aemon. The kid's fine. And the warlocks are already regretting their decision to snatch him, as you'll soon see.
> 
> And since we're on the subject of Aemon, I'll have a new two-chapter fic to share in the next few days. Let's call it "The Origins of Aemon Mormont" 😘 #OnceUponATimeOnAHot _Hot_ NightOnTheJadeSea...


	26. Songs of a Wildflower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back at the villa... :) #TheAdventuresofDaenielleAndGrandpaJeor
> 
> And salzrand, you know my feelings on the illustration this week and I'm still just kinda speechless - like Jeor, when he sees Julia for the first time *HEART EYES 9837733883EVER* *LEGIT DYING OF MORMONT FEEEEEEEEEEELS* <3 <3 <3
> 
> Oh and p.s. since I’m on the topic of Mormont feels, if you’re looking for some quality smolbb!Jorah plus Mama/Papa Mormont fluff - please check out some of Bridgr6’s recent fics because ummm, they’re seriously wonderful 😍❤️

**_Jeor_ **

_I sold my flax, I sold my wheel, to buy my lover sword of steel…_

Daenielle was humming as she cleaned up the wood shavings along my work bench. The song was a familiar one, to me at least. But old. And not one from this side of the sea.

_Gone the rainbow, gone the dove, your father was my only love…_

She didn’t sing the lyrics but they came back to me with little trouble, like an old friend from years ago and far away, unexpectedly strolling into a tavern, sinking down on the nearest stool, fingers wrapped around a mug of ale, to say, “This weather, eh?” as if they saw you just yesterday, instead of decades before.

“Where’d you learn that song?” I asked her from where I was at work, only a few feet away, sanding down the very last of the rowboat’s benches. I was a little curious. It was possible I’d taught it to her myself and then forgotten. But that was one of her grandmother’s songs and I only remembered the words after I heard her humming the tune. 

How many years since I’d heard that melody? Forty? Fifty? 

“Papa taught me,” Daenielle replied, in her simple, no-nonsense way. She didn’t stop cleaning, standing on her tiptoes as she used a wire brush to sweep all those shavings into a dustpan. 

I grinned at her clipped manner. There was no doubt that she had a dragon’s streak running through her, like that Targaryen silver ran through her hair. But my youngest granddaughter was mostly bear. Albeit, a little one, still just a cub.

 _Of course_. I thought at her answer. 

Yes, Jorah would know that song too. His mother had been generous with her songs. When he was still a child, I remember hovering in the hall outside Jorah’s bedchamber, watching Julia pull the covers up to his chin, brush back a lock of his hair and sing him one of her songs before kissing our little boy goodnight.

Those songs were all so shaded with melancholy and loss, but in her sweet voice, I scarcely noticed. At least not while she was living. After she was gone, they took on a more wistful, somber tone, darkening to despair, and I couldn’t stand to hear music in the Keep. And Julia’s songs, in particular.

Stubborn and foolish, I tried to forget those lines and melodies at Castle Black. But I’d hear them in my dreams sometimes, nonetheless.

In more recent years, I’d begun to remember them again. _All_ of them. And teach them to the children.

As I approached the end of my life, I found that eyesight grew a little dimmer, taste a little duller and my hearing just wasn’t what it used to be. But the sights and sounds of memory sharpened once more, growing in vividness and clarity, almost as brilliant as when they first hit my eyes and ears all those years ago.

It made sense that her songs would linger longest. I’d heard Julia’s voice before I ever saw her face. 

I’d been fishing up at the lake above the Keep all morning, and came into my father’s house through the servant’s entrance near the kitchens. I used that door more than the lord’s gate, and had, since I was a child. It was a strange Mormont who wouldn’t choose the closest door, especially if he was headed to the kitchens anyway, with a string of trout and pike in his hands.

It was spring on Bear Island. The fields and meadowlands bloomed with wildflowers, all painted in brushstrokes of blue, yellow and violet. The lake, rivers and streams were bursting with fish. In the forest, thick ferns covered the mossy undergrowth and oak and ash trees were unfurling their leaves in an array of fresh greens. Songbirds chattered away and grey rabbits and red foxes darted in and out of thickets and fens. 

We were surrounded in vernal beauty, and I spent more time in the woods that spring than anywhere else. Like any natural bear.

There were times when I slept in the woods. And my sister, Maege, used to ask if I’d become a regular skinchanger, like the Mormonts in the old stories. 

_Not quite_. I’d tell her, and wonder the same back. Maege never told me who Dacey’s father was, and seemed too pleased to hear the rumors that spread in our seaside villages, that her baby’s father was a great brown bear who prowled the evergreen forests, further up the jagged coast. 

That day I first met Julia, it looked like rain, so I cut my fishing short and made sure to come back to the Keep before the clouds opened wide and drenched me straight through. When I pushed the door to the kitchens open, I found the halls mostly abandoned, soon recalling that there was a carnival at Ynes Lyme that afternoon. 

But I wasn’t the only one home, for I immediately heard singing. 

_I wish I had a needle and thread, fine as I could sew…_

The voice was soft and quiet but sound carried far through our stone halls. And the sound was fairly uncommon. The House of Mormont was austere in the best of times, and we weren’t the type to keep minstrels or merriment in large supply, even in springtime. Otherwise, we would have hosted that carnival here, in the Keep.

Curious and not recognizing the voice, I set the fish aside and followed the sound to a nearby chamber, where I found our new laundress stirring linens in a vat of steaming water. The windows in the room were open to the chilly spring air and her hair was tied up with a kerchief, her wrist pushing a few strands back off her sweaty brow, tendrils curling prettily in the humidity of that steam and hot water.

It took her a moment to notice me, and when she did, she drifted off her singing at once, the last lyric fading away into a slightly sheepish grin.

 _Some come here to fiddle and dance, some come here to…_

She bit at her bottom lip gently, knowing that she’d been caught in the act. 

“Apologies, my lord,” she murmured, but with a twinkle in her blue eyes that said she was hardly sorry at all.

Julia knew me by sight, as I was Lord Mormont’s only son. There were few on the Island who didn’t. But there were even fewer that I didn’t know, as it was a small Island and we were a small House. Our strength has always lied in our bonds, not our numbers.

I’d never seen this girl. Or young woman, rather. I’d never met her. For if I had, I’d certainly remember those eyes, blue like the sparkle of dew on riverbank violets. And that soprano voice, crystalline like a brook falling down a mountain path.

I knew no poetry until I met her. No songs either. None that I can remember. She was gracious enough not to mind my unabashed staring, and went back to washing those linens, her eyes on her work and the steaming vat. 

“No, your voice is…lovely,” I replied, worried that the word didn’t do her justice. I spoke honestly, without guile, but didn’t mean to compliment her so directly. Or so earnestly. My mind was distracted, wondering who she was, wondering how I might get her to pick up that sweet melody again. 

But she wouldn’t, suddenly too shy with an audience. At least an audience she didn’t know well. 

Later, she’d tease me, “You married me only because you wanted to hear the end of that song.”

“I can think of worse reasons,” I countered, not denying it, though she knew better. 

I’d never loved anyone like I loved her—not before, not after. Maege used to say it was a good thing that the gods saw fit to send Julia to our shores, or I might have retreated to the woods for good, leaving the lordship of Bear Island to the birds and the bears. 

Our father died that spring and everyone expected me to choose a bride from one of the northern houses—Manderly, Karstark, Umber. Her first name didn’t matter. My advisors urged me to choose quickly, perhaps worried that I would take my time, as our father had. They knew I’d shown reticence in the idea of a political marriage, and likely worried that I’d fail to produce an heir, too busy fishing in the woods to care about securing my own house. 

Back then, I didn’t know why they worried. My sister was as capable of leading as I was. And she already had one child in her arms and another on the way. The Mormont name was secure, I thought, never realizing how close we’d come to watching it die out completely. 

But it didn’t. It hasn’t. 

Jorah survived, my grandchildren survived, Lyanna survived. And Maege’s littlest she-bear holds Bear Island with more strength and talent than either Jorah or I ever managed. I feel kindred with that young woman, even though we’re half a world away—for my sister’s sake, for her own. We’ve heard she’s as unwilling to bow to the pressure of her advisors as I was, and has yet to marry or bear children.

But she’s young yet. And I could sympathize with finding love in your own time.

When they began to talk of marriage and told me I should write to the Manderlys and invite them to Bear Island, I found myself wandering out to the yard behind the kitchens instead, where I found Julia, taking bed sheets down from a line, and bluntly asked her if she’d be willing.

“Willing to what?” She sighed a little, but with patience, already accustomed to my stark inability to start a conversation with anything other than the crux of the matter.

“Marry me,” I didn’t phrase it as a question. I didn’t want to give her a chance to say “no.” 

“I don’t think it’s very conventional for lords to marry their laundresses, is it…m’lord?” she asked slyly, while dragging the next sheet down from the line. She passed one sun-warmed edge into my hands, telling me to hold it steady, while she folded the center of the sheet flat. She kept her eyes on that sheet, but there was a grin playing at the edges of her mouth.

“Seven _hells_ can take what’s conventional,” I muttered to her, growling a little, which she shook her pretty head at. She was used to my manner by that time, and found it mostly endearing. I told her plainly, “I’ll take _you_ …if you’ll have me?”

“Will you, Jeor?” she answered, just as plainly. 

She didn’t believe me, I could tell. She’d grown up as a foundling child, passed from house to house down in the village, treated kindly enough, but she paid for her keep with hard work. There were no hand-outs on Bear Island. And orphan children know how the world works better than most.

Most of the time, anyway…

I took the folded sheet out of her hands and dropped it into the wicker basket at our feet. And I kissed her in pale spring sunlight, her mouth breaking open as she smiled sweetly, her arms coming up to slide around my neck. 

It was not our first kiss, nor our last. But if I’d known how numbered those kisses would be, I would have stolen a dozen more before letting her go.

She left my life, just as suddenly and strangely as she’d entered it. Like a mountain breeze. Like wildflowers. One day you walk into the meadows, and there they are, in all their untamed beauty, in all their magic. And then, just as quickly, they’re gone again. 

And the world reverts back to its drabber, duller colors. Spring is over. Summer is gone. The colors vanish, the songs go silent.

 _You were lucky to have her for any time at all_. Maege used to remind me, trying to pull me out of a grief-stricken stupor that I’d never shake off. _She might have drowned in that shipwreck and you would never have known her_.

I didn’t care for my sister’s words of comfort, no matter how true they were. I was unwilling to hear it. I’d convinced myself that the joy wasn’t worth it, not with the aching pain left behind. 

It was only many years later when I realized how wrong I was to hold onto that grief. 

It took Jeorgianna reaching up and touching my hand and asking in her little voice, “Are you my Grandfather?” to show me how foolish I’d been.

No matter how fleeting our time together, it was worth it. For Julia lived on in Jorah and in his children. I could see her blue eyes in their dear faces; I could hear her voice in my youngest granddaughter’s soft humming. 

“That’s one of your Grandmother’s songs,” I mentioned to the little girl and she nodded.

“I know,” she said. After she finished cleaning those shavings, she turned to me. With one hand holding the dustpan and the other resting on her hip, she asked a question that I’d been asking myself for half a century, “Where do you think she learned them?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, taking that sanding stone away from the wood. I ran the heel of my hand over the crosspiece, making sure it was smooth and without splinters. I shrugged, “Your Grandmother didn’t know either.”

“She didn’t know where she came from?”

“No, she was barely old enough to speak when she washed ashore. She told me her first memory was of a wind chime, hanging in the window of the fisherman’s house that first took her in. She couldn’t remember anything of her life before Bear Island—where she came from or who her people were.”

“But she remembered those songs…”

“Aye, she did,” I allowed. 

Strange, beautiful songs, they were. And not from the mainland either. Some were old, from my grandfather’s time. Some we’d never heard before. Not in Westeros.

In natural Mormont fashion, Daenielle and I didn’t muse over _that_ odd little detail further. 

Although, maybe we should have? Certainly, _I_ should have. And long before now. But I suppose happiness distracted me first and grief second. I _never_ cared where Julia came from or what had happened to bring her to the Island.

I only cared for _her_ , and blessed wherever, whatever, whoever had brought her into my life.

I didn’t know it then, but I would know the truth before I died. In fact, I would know it much sooner than I might expect. And the truth was…as strange and wonderful and unexpected as everything else about my lost wildflower.

_Apples in the summertime, peaches in the fall…_

But, for now, Daenielle and I looked only to the present, blissfully unaware of the mischief that the warlocks of Qarth were currently playing at, or how their mischief would unintentionally spill out a long-held secret that had died with whoever taught Julia all those pretty, melancholy songs. 

I made one final pass with the sanding stone. After months of work, the boat was _finally_ done and there was only one thing left to do.

“Daenielle, fetch him, would you?” I gave a nod towards the workshop door. 

She took the opportunity to throw out the smaller wood shavings at the same time, scattering them in the yard for sparrows and finches to pick over for nesting material. 

One of her ducks met her at the door, having wandered down from the garden pools, waddling around the threshold, quacking, searching for tiny insects in the loose stones on the path leading up to the villa. That duck continued along, reaching the shaded hedges, where he’d have better luck with beetles and worms in the damp earth and undergrowth. 

Those hedges hid all manner of creatures. Including one who _really_ should know better than to hide there.

“Mathias!” Daenielle called out his name. He was crouched behind thorny shrubs and raspberry bushes, boots visible, no better at choosing hiding places than which young girls to woo.

Daenielle’s tone left no room for argument as she gave him the facts, “Jeorgianna isn’t home, but Grandfather says to come in and help us carry this boat down to the beach.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm using old folk songs for Julia's songs because they're magic and transcend time, I swear. 
> 
> So the lyrics are from "Gone the Rainbow" (which is itself a play on "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier") and "Shady Grove." Huge shout out to slytherinhowl (*hugs* if you're still around, m'lovely <3) for introducing me to "Gone the Rainbow" in the first place :)


	27. Black Bark Grove

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all about magic. 
> 
> Like love stories that last lifetimes. And like salzrand's ability to make me crush on my own OC 😂😍 #OhHelloArthur

**_Ashara_**

“Be careful…,” I warned Arthur, as we approached the House of the Undying. 

He was walking only a few steps in front of me, while Barristan remained at my side. Arthur’s hand was on the hilt of his sword and his eyes were alert, watching for guards and warlocks hidden around the stonework ruins and among those tall, shadow-kissed trees. 

Guard or warlock, witch or priest. We had yet to see a single one. 

There was a whisper of breeze in the higher tree branches, and a faraway echo that sometimes sounded like a little girl humming, but the black-barked grove was otherwise silent. No birds lived here, as the trees dripped blue sap down their black trunks, and the skies above this place always seemed slightly distorted, hazy and shimmering, worse the closer one came to the center.

And we were headed straight for it, like an arrow to a target, climbing plateaued steps leading to that rough-hewn tower.

My warning was directed at Arthur, but it was for Barristan too. And myself, as a reminder, since age and experience mattered little here.

The House of the Undying loomed before us. And the air sparked with mischief…and an unhealthy amount of magic. I felt knotted tangles of it lightly catch the air, like tumbleweed, hanging in the trees, crouching by the ruins, gathering near my fingertips as invisible strands, ever seeking out hands that were used to playing with unnatural spirits.

I ignored those feelings and the impulse to pick at those knotted threads and discover the mysteries within. There are some immutable wisdoms when it comes to magic—the main one being that it’s never wise to play with magic that isn’t your own.

I’d seen that firsthand in Asshai, when that red witch tried to use _my_ magic against me. Even when I scarcely realized I had any, even when I didn’t know yet that it was mine to control. 

“Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here,” I cautioned further, sending a tense glance Barristan’s way as well. 

He gave me a small nod, trusting my judgment, following my lead. He held a staff, not a sword. Before we entered this place, he said he’d leave any fighting to Arthur and I think he knew better anyway—from the tone of my voice or the look in my eyes when I asked that he come with me.

Steel would do us no good here.

This was not a place for swords or daggers. Nor battle plans or common sense. It was a place of tricks and riddles…and danger. Of a much different kind than these two men were used to. 

They say the warlocks’ minds go soft with shade of the evening, but it’s worse than that. There’s nothing soft about them at all. All hard and greedy. Crafty, cold and sharp, like the steel they sliced across the bare throats of the Spice King, the Silk King, and all the rest.

All reckless violence and power-hungry madness, shrouded in shadows and lies.

It was a rare thing for me _not_ to see through Pyat Pree’s illusions. But the morning we walked among the old ruins, the black-bark grove was sparking with more magic than I’d ever known the Qarthian warlocks to possess and I found myself uneasy as we drew closer to the tower, wondering how they were hiding their presence from me so easily.

Had I become too susceptible to lies? I’d played at them long enough. My face, my name, the color of my eyes…

I wasn’t playing in lies any longer. My mask lay discarded in a drawer in my house. For the first time in years, I delighted in the sound of my own name, falling so often now off the tongue of a man who had kept it safe, while I did my best to forget it. For good.

 _Happy is your failure, Ashara_. And I couldn’t disagree. 

I’d left Starfall with my heart shattered, pieces so sharp I couldn’t pick them up again without cutting myself. But when Barristan held me, I swear those pieces forged back together again with such ease and speed, by a natural magic that couldn’t be replicated by the most talented mage hands in all the known world, even if they tried. 

His presence. His eyes. Just the sound of his voice saying my name. I…

It’s hard for me to explain why it mattered. Or how _one_ minute could mend the pain and fear of _forty_ years. It was as if a hideous shadow had been chasing me since the day Ned Stark gave me back my brother’s sword—grasping, chasing, rushing, intent on hunting me down. I’d been running ever since, unable to think, unable to remember. For fear the memories would trip me up and the monster would swiftly overtake me.

But when I turned from my starflowers and saw Barristan standing there…

When I felt the brush of his hand against my wrist and I found myself face-to-face with memories that I had suppressed for so very long…I suddenly stopped running, clenched my teeth, covered my eyes and waited for the killing blow. 

It never came. It vanished, remains falling over me like the mist of an ocean spray.

Instead, I felt gentle arms go around my shoulders and a familiar voice murmur, in sheer, wondrous relief, “I never thought I’d see you again.” 

I cried in Barristan’s arms, as I hadn’t cried in _years_. But they weren’t sad tears. Not really. Or maybe they were? I couldn’t remember what sadness felt like, having given it up forever ago. Together with grief, and wistfulness, and love…

All the feelings that matter.

When I left Asshai, I thought I was a husk of a woman. Hollowed out and unable to feel _anything_ , ever again. That was a good thing. I was safe from grief, locked away from the pain that inevitably followed love. 

But those tears proved me false. 

Wonderfully, _gloriously_ false. And still more false, when his nephew arrived, finding us locked in an embrace that may have lasted a lifetime. I don’t know how long he held me, I truly don’t. I hadn’t been held by anyone, in forty years’ time. Not since Ned…

I was drying my eyes with my fingers when Barristan introduced me to Arthur, and I laughed through a few more tears, both heart-broken and heart-mended, all at the same time. Barristan’s eyes went soft, even as his nephew looked at me a little strangely, I’m sure. 

Barristan’s nephew wouldn’t know. He _couldn’t_ know. It was his name. 

_Arthur._

My brother’s name. My brother, who spoke to me so gently after our mother died—“You’re not alone, Ashara”—who never failed to wave up from the sparring yard in King’s Landing as Elia and I walked the balconies above, who would always spare a glance towards the highest tower window of Palestone Sword, whenever he came home to Starfall, knowing that I’d be perched up there, watching the boats come inland and grinning at his welcome return. 

Barristan’s nephew was tall, handsome and had kind eyes. He was as young as Arthur had been when I hugged him goodbye the last time. As young as _I_ had been. 

Oh, I liked him already. If only for his name.

With the old spell broken, memories rushed back on me for days afterwards. So many of them, filling me up like sunlight fills up shadow. I think I would have been overwhelmed if Barristan hadn’t stayed near. But I kept him close, reaching over and covering his hand with mine more than once, as we sat together on my terrace, sipping tea, drinking in comfortable silence. I needed to know he was real.

“I’m not going to disappear,” he promised each time, squeezing my hand lightly.

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” I muttered, but found myself _powerfully_ reassured by his touch. 

Enough that I suspected the remnants of that broken spell lingered between us, binding us together, though we needed no magic beyond a long-ago dance to accomplish that.

I felt stronger with him nearby, able to face memories I’d not dared for too many years to count. 

And in the weeks that followed, my greensight was sharpened, as if on a whetstone made from shards of the spell. A nagging feeling had been plaguing me since I knew Pyat Pree was playing with glass candles and boldly hiding his aim from my sight. 

That nag suddenly became too urgent. 

This morning, the feeling boiled over and I was compelled to visit the House of the Undying. And I asked Barristan to come with me, which he agreed to without hesitation.

We would never be parted again. That time was over.

Much as was my time avoiding the House of the Undying.

From the moment I arrived in Qarth, I’d steered clear of that place. It wasn’t so much that I worried Pyat Pree might somehow manage to entrap me and drain me of what magic lived in my veins—no. 

He’d tried a number of times over the years and I always found his talents to be sorely lacking. I could flick him away from me like a little black fly. Even here, in his own house. 

He was no wizard, despite his reputation. He was little better than a charlatan. He built his spells on shallow glamours and cheap illusions. His danger was not in his spells. It was in how willingly he spilled blood and took life. He played Xaro’s assassin well and cut the throats of the remaining Thirteen without a second thought. And a few more after that.

There’s always danger in a depraved heart. But no, that’s not why I stayed away from the House of the Undying. 

I stayed away because it was a tower. And my history with towers was…

I almost jumped from Palestone Sword. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. I climbed up in my bedroom window and even let my foot hover over the dizzying heights, finding myself giddy on the sense that if I just let go from that tower window, I would feel the rush of the air and the spin of the earth and then…

Nothing at all.

That cold spring breeze rushing off the Torrentine seemed to tempt me to it. My expression was nearly blank as I gazed down at the sea below, one final step from casting myself down into its frothy, raging surf. If I went headfirst, I might not even feel myself hit the black rocks below.

The temptation lingered for days, as I’d locked myself in my room as soon as Ned and Howland Reed left Starfall. My brother’s sword was with me, lying on my bed, staining the covers. I still hadn’t cleaned off the blood. 

When I looked at that sword, I felt like I was falling into a black hole in the ground. I couldn’t stop falling. And I just wanted the fall to end.

With one step, I could end it…

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. 

There are those who think that there’s magic lacing _all_ our veins, some more than others, some hidden away until it breaks wide open, forced out in a moment of intense grief or rage.

I know this is true, because it happened to me. 

I saw the future. Not as an image in my head or some vague impression. But before my eyes, like a flashing burst of lightning from clear skies. I saw myself in a foreign city, staring up at a black, obsidian tower. No, I was _there_ , my neck craning up to red-violet clouds, swirled around the black tower, my fingers holding fast to a coin with a star imprinted on its silver face… 

And then, just as quickly, the scene was gone, and I was back in my bedchamber in Starfall, staring at the sea below.

My foot came back, as I climbed off my window quickly, pushed back by the force of that vision. I sat down on the bench just beneath, closing my eyes, hand covering my mouth, wondering what I had just witnessed.

Had I lost my mind? I wondered. Of course, I had. I’d been about to…

I took a few deep breaths and I waited to see if that overwhelming feeling of grief would return. I wasn’t beyond climbing back up into the window and trying it a second time. 

But I didn’t. A wild and strange curiosity soon mixed with my grief, tending it with crude stitches, but just enough that the wound held together. And I didn’t jump. 

I was being used, and I didn’t know it. In my devastating grief, I’d woken a power within me that I didn’t know I had. If my life had continued placidly, all garden parties and gentility, perhaps I never would have known at all. 

That I could sometimes see the future. And see it more clearly than anyone else alive.

And I remembered vividly, how that awakening drew others to me, like moths to an open flame. Mages and priests and men in black robes who had no names. A red witch with a taste for the heart of a star. All greedy and open-mouthed, looking to rob me of that power. They felt new magic, from thousands of miles away, and came seeking, tricking me to cross the sea, so they might claim it for their own.

Now I was the one sensing new magic.

Magic that didn’t belong to Pyat Pree, nor his minor mages.

Something else. Some _one_ else.

A prisoner, a hostage. Why did they take a prisoner to the House of the Undying? And why was it muddled up in my head, with the storms that swept through Qarth? I couldn’t see this part clearly but I knew that one was bound tightly with the other.

_Black scales, golden scales. Dragons are fire made flesh…_

Months had passed and I still couldn’t let go of the idea that the storm that blew in from the east wasn’t a mistake of nature. It blew its course deliberately, forcing those dragons to fly above the city, in full view of those watching below.

_And when they see, they will lust…for fire is power._

As we drew closer to the House of the Undying, pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit. The riddle box before me had no straight answer, but I needed no scrying pool to know that two dragons were once again headed to Qarth. With purpose, this time.

Or that the warlocks, hidden away in this unholy grove, were pleased that they would be landing here shortly, within hours, crumbling the ruins under their weight, angry and too willing to spit fire at their enemies.

But fire was power. Wild and untamed. And the warlocks would lock them in with it.

I reached for Arthur, stopping him, holding him back from entering the stone circle that surrounded the tower itself. 

“No further,” I told him, shaking my head. My eyes likely looked glazed to him, as my vision was clouded, seeing only half in the present. But I forced myself to come back from visions for a moment, to give him firm instructions. “They’re flying across the Red Waste and will head straight for the tower. Stop them, flag them down. Don’t let them cross the Gates of Qarth.”

“Who?” Arthur didn’t love how vague I was being. But he trusted me implicitly, for his uncle’s sake. 

“You will see that Mormont girl again very soon,” I encouraged him. I couldn’t see all their faces and names, but I saw her, astride the dark beast and telling her dragon to hurry. That young woman had her mother’s hair and her father’s eyes. 

The image flickered, unsteady. I was being accosted on all sides by the warlocks’ magic, as they attempted to suppress my sight. They wanted the dragons to come here. 

Those coming were attempting a rescue, but they’d be walking into a trap.

“Go. Hurry,” I told him, struggling to get the words out, repeating myself, “Don’t let them pass the Gates…” 

“Do as she says, Arthur,” Barristan’s hand had come to rest on my arm, and I was grateful for his support. This was all very new to him too, and he was no more used to mysticism than his nephew. 

Or was he? 

He told me that sixteen years ago, a voice had led him home to Harvest Hall when he was set on seeking out the Targaryen children across the sea. And that voice wasn’t his own. 

It was _mine_. He was adamant. He had no doubt, he said, knowing it in his soul as soon as he heard my voice once more. But it couldn’t have been mine. I didn’t know he was alive until the morning after the storms. I wouldn’t have been able to say his name or describe his face. 

Which was nearly unfathomable to me now, given that Barristan’s touch seemed to have more power here than anything else, able to clear away the warlocks’ fog and my own uncertainty with no more than a brush of his fingers.

But that wasn’t magic. It was just his love for me. Which they say can be a greater magic than any other.

And oh, I was depending on it. 

Arthur nodded at his uncle once before heading back the way we came, picking up his pace quickly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he could feel it. Barristan too. Neither one of them were sensitive to this sort of thing, having no practice in it. But the House of the Undying was currently _infested_ by magic, at least three kinds that I could count, other than my own.

Pyat Pree’s, which was familiar, petty and cruel.

His prisoner’s, which pulsed softly, as yet unknown to its owner, untouched…but breezy and light, like children running and laughing along a beach of white sands, like pretty songs sung by a young woman wandering a meadow and picking wildflowers, passing them into the little hands of the tow-headed toddler balanced on her hip.

And a darker, stronger magic behind all of this, black as congealed blood, sticky and stinking of incense, a strain that belonged _far_ east of here. 

One that I would never forget, as long as I lived, having seen it, felt it and tasted it, bitter like ash and blood sacrifice, in only one other place in the entire world.

Asshai.


	28. The House of the Undying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aemon Mormont, ladies and gentlemen, SassMaester <3

**_Aemon_ **

Much later, we put it together that Daenielle had been humming one of Grandmother’s songs at the exact moment a tall, thin man with blue lips and a bald head was vainly trying to affix a heavy, iron manacle around my ankle.

I wasn’t fighting him or kicking him away, mostly because I’d done that already and after the third time, there didn’t seem to be any need. The chain wouldn’t stay on, despite being tailor-made to lock me in. 

It kept slipping off like it was greased with oil. The lock wouldn’t hold at all. And then finally, as the man’s growing fit of rage caused him to sputter on a string of curses, the manacle broke in two parts, crumbling in his hands as if the iron had gone brittle, though it looked freshly forged to me. 

“That’s too bad…,” I muttered for him.

And I wasn’t trying to be clever or anything but in the seconds after that manacle broke, I gave a short tug at the chains on my wrists and they broke free from the brick walls surrounding us just as easily, the fixtures clattering to the cold, stone floor of this torch-lit, windowless dungeon that the warlocks seemed intent on locking me in.

The man with blue lips gave up his curses, his throat squeaking out an anxious little whine at the broken irons, looking around his tower in frustration and muttering a strained little chorus of, “No, no, no, why won’t you stay?…” under his breath. 

The question wasn’t for me, so I didn’t answer. Besides, I was too busy raising my hands up curiously, watching those iron bands around my wrists disintegrate into dust and fall onto the tiled stone like beach sand. It was all very strange, but I was growing used to this sort of thing, having been dealing with it almost hourly for the last day and a half. 

I suppose it was all illusions but it certainly felt real. Although not as real as the warlocks might have preferred.

The bald man was clenching his veiny fist, with his pinched face scrunched up and his thin lips curled into a terrible scowl. 

I leaned back against the altar that marked the heart and center of this place, crossing my unshackled arms over my chest and offering what I thought might be a helpful observation, “That’s the third time you’ve tried this. I don’t think your chains are going to work.”

“Hush, you _insufferable_ child,” the man growled at me. I didn’t take it personally. He wasn’t having a very good day.

Not much had worked for him so far. At least, not since I’d been brought to Qarth. 

Apparently, the House of the Undying was meant to be a prison of sorts, but they were having a hard time keeping me where they wanted. 

I’d wandered away from this dungeon twice so far, exploring their tangled maze of chambers, rooms within rooms, doors within doors. There was a high mauve curtain that I pulled back to reveal a frozen lake. I walked across its icy surface, all those low, grey clouds reflected in its perfectly flat surface. There was another chamber that was humid and thick with plant life that I crawled through, holding my hands up against leafy undergrowth and purple thorns, as if I was in the middle of a hot southern jungle. And there were checkered hallways that twisted upside down, with a circular staircase that somehow ended up right back where it started. 

I’d almost made it out of the tower once already, I think—it was hard to tell. But I’d been following what I thought was Jeorgianna’s voice, or maybe my mother’s…although if it was Mama’s, I think the halls were playing tricks because she sounded years younger. 

_Are you afraid of a little girl?_

In the dark, I saw torchlight that flickered ahead of me and I chased after it, until I decided it might be sunlight, flickering through cracks in the stone, up there or over there or out there, wherever out was. In that thick grove of black trees that they’d led me through before sealing us all away in this ugly vault of a tower. 

But before I could go a step further, they found me and dragged me back here again, to this prison cell. They could drag me to this room over and over again, but they had yet to keep me here. And it was getting under their sallow skin. 

This last time, they even attempted to change the scenery, making it a little more attractive for me to sit still. The change was instantaneous. The stone walls became ivory, inlaid with gold and sapphires. Brightly-colored rugs and soft couches appeared. The room expanded to one hundred times its former size, lit up in golden colors that had no discernible light source, though I imagine it came from somewhere above me, shining through stained glass mosaics that formed a translucent ceiling way, way up there, reaching heights higher than the Wall at Castle Black.

And they’d set up a long table with every imaginable food and drink, spiced pies and roasted meat and sweet fruits mixing their scents together in a delectable way, enough that I was tempted to reach out and grab some. I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. They hadn’t given me so much as a scrap of bread since they snatched me away from that Meereenese street. 

They didn’t even let me keep that peach, slapping it out of my hands. Which seemed overly rude, considering I’d shared with that little traitor-child in turquoise. They weren’t very gracious hosts. Even for kidnappers.

“No, this doesn’t make any sense,” I decided, rather flatly and shaking my head, after a moment looking at a few tapestries that hung on their falsely gilded walls. 

I think the tapestries were meant to scare me straight, but they were so poorly threaded and the scenes were too strange to take seriously. 

This one showed my mother crying over my father on a battlefield somewhere, with Dark Sister curled around them both. This one showed Bearfyre, breathing fire at the Wall, with an icy blue flame that matched his icy blue eyes. I squinted at the threads critically, mentioning, “Dark Sister is too large in this one and the lighting is all wrong. You can barely see anything. And Bearfyre’s eyes aren’t blue, they’re green.” 

The mirage melted too easily, unable to stand my small criticisms. The tapestries went soft like candle wax and unraveled into piles of gooey threads on the floor that slipped and seeped away into cracks between stones. The rest of it—the feast, the soft couches, the fine rugs—all vanished as well.

This didn’t make Pyat Pree very happy. My kidnapper couldn’t understand why his illusions kept falling apart. Neither could I, but at least I had an excuse.

I had no experience with magic.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. But I was unaware of it at the time. We didn’t understand about Grandmother’s songs back then—even Grandmother herself never realized, so how were we supposed to know? How her songs _weren’t_ just songs at all and how they’d been accidently protecting us since we were babies. And Papa before us. 

They were such simple spells, almost childlike, which was likely why they were taught to Grandmother in the first place, so she would remember the words, so she would sing them often. But they were strong spells too. Their effects lingered for years and carried in from such far distances. 

Every time Grandfather picked Daenielle out of her cradle and sang her one of those lullabies, or every time Papa taught us a half-remembered fragment of one of his mother’s songs, it was weaving its power around us—keeping those the singer _loved_ safe from certain harms. 

Not everything, of course. But dark magic, most certainly. Grandmother’s songs seemed to _hate_ lies and darkness, with a passion.

If I’d known the strength in those sweet songs or the breadth of magic contained in even a single verse, I would have jumped up on the dungeon’s altar and begun singing them at the top of my lungs, until the blue-lipped man cursing his own faithless chains was forced to cower and cover his ears or risk a loss of hearing. 

And if I had, I might’ve even been able to walk out of the House of the Undying by myself, before Mama, Papa or Jeorgianna were halfway to Qarth.

I should have been more afraid, I know. But I was barely fourteen that year, too young to fear death. I decided that if they were going to kill me, they would have done it already. And I suppose I just assumed that my father, who had killed a thousand dead men in one night, and my mother, who had saved the heir to the throne of Westeros by rushing into open flames, would be along shortly and show these warlocks how stupid they’d been in daring to snatch me away.

And maybe they were regretting it already?

There were voices in the House of the Undying. Like I said, I’d heard Jeorgianna or my mother in the hallways. And, for a moment, I thought I heard my father’s voice too, from outside, crying out, desperately.

_Khaleesi!_

But then I heard my little sister humming and Grandfather saying, _There’s no better fishing in the world than on Bear Island, lass, but I’ll allow the Jade Sea is a close second best…_

And there were other voices, speaking over one another, but softly, like strange echoes that I couldn’t parse out, having no idea who they belonged to or what they were saying:

_The Lannisters send their regards._

_Kill the boy._

_Get him south, Gillyflower._

_If you want justice, you’ve come to the wrong place._

These voices were faint and faded in and out, like wisps of smoke. Or fragments of overheard conversations. Or just cheap tricks.

I paid them little mind.

The only voices that held any substance were the warlocks, sometimes one, sometimes a whole group of them, all with the same face, who berated me as soon as they brought me here, “You weren’t supposed to be born. She wasn’t supposed to run away. The dragons were not yours to claim. But you woke the dragon anyway. Daenerys Stormborn was warned. She was warned over and over again. Your existence is blasphemy in the face of prophecy…”

“Well, it’s not very good prophecy if it said I wouldn’t be born, is it?” I interrupted their ranting, adding, “Because I’m here.”

Fine. Maybe I _was_ being clever. But the warlocks were talking _nonsense_. And my Mormont blood has never taken to nonsense very well.

“Silence!” the bald man had hissed at my brazen disrespect. “Or you won’t be here much longer.”

But immediately after that not-so-veiled threat, we heard another voice bubble out from deep in the bowels of this house, snapping on embers, wreathed in hot flames. This voice had more substance than all the rest. It was ancient, grim and foreign. I had a feeling the voice wasn’t speaking the Common Tongue or Valyrian, but I was able to understand it just the same,

_Take care, Pyat Pree. If you remove a hair on this boy’s head, you’ll lose your own…_

“We won’t need him once the dragons come to Qarth,” the warlock insisted.

_Neither will I need you…_

And then the voice receded just as quickly, back to wherever it came from. It had a physical presence that burned, charring the stones and brick, and I was glad when it was gone.

But I also couldn’t help but suppress a grin in the moments that followed, seeing how Pyat Pree’s face had blanched white. I had a feeling he’d made a deal with someone that he shouldn’t have been making deals with and it wasn’t going quite as planned. I wasn’t thrilled to be at the center of it, of course, but as I seemed to be immune to any mortal danger for the present, I took the opportunity to ask the most pressing question.

“Some trouble with your master?” I bit my lip in faux sympathy. 

“ _I_ am master here!” Pyat Pree declared, and his voice echoed loudly in the tower. He winced at the echo, as if expecting the roof to collapse in on itself and bury him alive. 

No, I don’t think he had a handle on the situation at all. 

Especially as he had yet to find chains that worked. 

“Stay here,” he seethed, in a dangerous tone, before disappearing through a black hole in the wall that was too soon sewn up by shadow. 

“You know ‘stay here’ implies that I have the ability to leave if I want. You shouldn’t plant that notion in your prisoner’s head!” I called after him, sighing a little and looking around the ugly, sparse cell, once again. 

No doors, no windows. A black ceiling that faded into nothingness, a stone floor that I was only half convinced was any more solid than the rest of it. Maybe I wasn’t real either? 

Oh, but my stomach was still growling and I almost wished that Pyat Pree would come back and conjure another feast mirage. Did illusions get hungry? Did illusions question whether or not they were illusions? 

_This is the dumbest house in the dumbest city that ever has or ever will be. I decided._

Wait…

I pushed myself off that stone altar, taking a step towards the wall before spinning around to check all sides. I was alone. The warlocks hadn’t returned yet. 

But a door had suddenly appeared in the rounded chamber. Not a hole, not a shadow—a door. It was fairly plain, with none of the rich gilding or ivory and gold the warlocks seemed to fancy with their false images. It grew into the wall like a tree, made of tangled vines and branches, roots spilling on the stone floor and flowering with white roses and starflowers at each corner, growing a door knob made of knotted twigs and tiny, heart-shaped leaves.

As I watched, a scene was being etched on that door, carved into the wood.

A bear standing on his haunches beneath the stars, eyes raised to a dragon soaring in the night sky. 

_Don’t fall for their tricks, little bear._ Jeorgianna’s voice was in my head, preaching caution. _They want you to go through that door…_

_I know._ I answered her, even though she wasn’t there. But still, I stood before that strange door, thinking, considering… 

_But what if this isn’t their magic?_

It felt different somehow, though I had no idea how I would know that. It felt like escape. And always more impulsive than my sister, I decided to risk it.


	29. Garden of Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this update is almost a week late >_< Haha sorry about that, lovelies. Summer is a wonderful season but it has this really bad habit of eating up all my extra time.
> 
> But here you go. Finally. With a fabulous double OTP snapshot by salzrand ❤️️❤️️❤️️
> 
> Anyway, I'll probably do a mid-week post for the next update and then hopefully back to Sundays. Although, we're about 5 chapters (including this one) away from the end, so not many updates left. Eeeeeeeee! <3
> 
> And if you're following the _Jamais_ fic, I'll have an update on that tomorrow too <3 Also Missandei-flavored and quite possibly one of my favorite Daenerys/Missandei scenes I've ever written 😭😍

**_Missandei_ **

In the shadow of two massive and angry dragons, one gold, one black, we waited. In the red dust of Qarth’s fabled Garden of Bones, we waited—the Mormonts, Grey Worm, Daario Naharis and me. 

And a young man named Arthur Selmy, who had met us at the gates, rushing out onto the dusty landscape, jumping up and down and waving both hands high above his head as we approached the city, calling us down with desperate insistence. 

He was out of breath and had run two miles of city streets to stop us. It was a good thing too. For Grey Worm and I rode with Jeorgianna, and I knew that had he not stopped her, she would have urged Dark Sister past those gates and into the ruins of the House of the Undying, unceremoniously ramming her dragon down the blue-stained throats of the warlocks that lived there. 

“I know him…,” Jeorgianna murmured, almost to herself, as she caught sight of the man waving his arms above his head below, hoping we saw him in time. 

There was a brief moment of hesitation from Jeorgianna. I could sense it in the rigid way she braced her knees against the dragon’s back and held her posture, just a little stubbornly. She was on a course to save her little brother. And she would not be dissuaded.

At least…not without reason. 

She threw a rapid glance towards her father and mother, both astride the gold dragon, flying in tandem, with Daario Naharis a few spines back, holding himself flat against the dragon’s scales, eyes tightly shut and grip white-knuckled, having discovered a latent fear of heights on this flight from Meereen that I don’t believe the Tyroshi sellsword knew he had. 

Jeorgianna and her parents communicated silently, as was their family habit, but she soon gave a short command to her dragon, in Old Valyrian.

 _Down, Dark Sister…_

Daario Naharis seemed relieved to be descending, finally raising his fine locks from Bearfyre’s leathery hide. I glanced back at Torgo and caught him grinning, just a little. This was no pleasure trip but I knew why he grinned, and why he couldn’t stop himself from doing so, despite the reasons that brought us to Qarth. 

Worms, fleas and rats don’t often get to fly. But Slaver’s Bay—or Dragon’s Bay, as they’d call it now, was changing so fast. What was one more miracle mixed in with all the rest? I gave him a fleeting, secret grin in return, breathing in the rush of fresh air that came with the freedom of flying.

 _True_ freedom. I was beginning to believe that it might last. For Grey Worm, for me. And for the rest of Slaver’s Bay.

_Dragon’s Bay, Missandei. Out with the old, in with the new._

Lord Tyrion had remained behind in Meereen, as he said he’d be useless against the warlocks and someone had to stay behind to continue wrangling the delicate treaty being drawn up between former slaves and disgraced masters. 

_Fly safe and stay sweet, Missandei of Naath_ , the dwarf bid me a kind farewell, kissing my hand without having to bend to do it. Perhaps he knew that Grey Worm and I had no intention of returning to Meereen, despite having said nothing definite. But Tyrion Lannister seemed to know things that went unsaid. 

It seemed to be his greatest talent, second only to his ability to drink copious amounts of wine that might kill a man twice his size.

I’m glad he got his vineyard. I hope it makes him sweet wine for years and years to come. 

He watched us climb the dragons with a little regret. As much as he knew he needed to stay and as dire as the reason that called us away, I think he would have given up much to ride on the back of a dragon. What’s a Lannister gold mine against a ride in the rafters of the sky?

 _Someday_ …his eyes willed it to be true.

But I wondered if maybe Tyrion had underestimated his worth. It might have been better if he’d come to Qarth with the rest of us after all. Without him, the balance between those of us who pondered things grimly and those of us who prattled on with nonsense tipped towards the grim lot. Substantially. And we could use the distraction of a chatterbox, to cut through the tense waiting that locked us outside the city gates. 

Daario Naharis might have been helpful in this regard, but he was still recovering from the air travel. His feet were the first to hit the dust but he stumbled a little in getting off the beast, as if drunk. His balance was better now, but he was turning his knife hand one way and then the other with a slight frown, still…off. 

The tall, dark-haired man who waved us down was likewise short-spoken, though he greeted both Jorah and Jeorgianna as if he knew them. I noticed that his eyes lingered on Jeorgianna for a moment longer than necessary.

And hers on him.

Daenerys and Jorah didn’t notice. Or perhaps they did but could spare no attention to it. Their son was still missing and time stretched thin…

“If the emissary doesn’t come out soon…,” Daenerys was fretting endlessly, gazing up at her husband and shaking her head sternly. She was a taut wire of restless energy, no better for the trip, with her hands wrung together, clenching and unclenching, many times every minute. 

No less than Jorah, who regarded the young man fiercely, stating plainly, “We can’t just sit here, Arthur. They have our son.”

“I know, Ser,” Arthur Selmy’s tone was even and drenched with true empathy. He knew what he asked went against _every_ impulse that currently flooded through Jorah and Daenerys, and Jeorgianna too—Arthur spared an extra glance on her, before returning to her father. 

He was adamant about holding our ground. He implored the man to listen, to _wait_ , “She says that’s what they want. And if the dragons pass these gates, you’ll not recognize them as your own much longer.”

“Ashara Dayne…,” Jorah muttered on the name, his voice holding more than a few notes of disbelief. Jorah had quarreled with Arthur over this, telling the younger man that Ashara Dayne had killed herself years ago, jumping from a tower in a place called Starfall. Everyone knew the story, he said. 

At least everyone west of the Narrow Sea. 

I knew of no Ashara Dayne. The name meant nothing to me. But I’d certainly heard of Quaithe of Asshai. 

I was in Qarth once before, not that many years ago. My master—no, Kraznys… 

_Call him Kraznys, Missandei. He is no one’s master now._ I was trying to break myself of the habit of giving that dead man a title that didn’t belong to him. That he didn’t deserve. Oh, but it was difficult. I’d lived in his house longer than any other. 

He brought me with him on a trip to this city, needing my skills with languages. The Qarthians spoke the Common Tongue along their docks and in their market streets and trading districts but they would switch to their own tongue, a stranger and more lyrical dialect, at the least provocation, and often with Kraznys, as I don’t think they liked him very much.

The Qarthians draped themselves in beauty and mysticism, both seen and unseen. Kraznys and the other masters of Astapor were crude, boorish and believed in only what they could see, smell, touch and taste. Buy and sell. Or _own_. 

Kraznys had procured an audience with the richest man in Qarth—Xaro Xhoan Daxos, a burly man with skin a few shades darker than my own and rich, flowing robes of bright, summer colors. Kraznys had been told that the man’s vault held more wealth than all the Free Cities combined. He’d further been told that Xaro Xhoan Daxos liked to spend lavishly, if only to prove that expense was nothing to him. _And_ that he was fashioning himself to be the King of Qarth, so would likely be in need of a standing army to protect his claim. 

Master Kraznys meant to sell him the Unsullied. 

But the negotiations were done in a half-hearted manner, with no urgency on either side. I found that the words I translated weren’t words of trade or compensation, but more of wine and slave girls and an infantile comparison of palaces.

_We have hanging gardens twice this size in Astapor…_

That year, my mas—Kraznys did not yet feel the pinch of an army he couldn’t maintain. And Xaro was in the middle of positioning his final grab for power. It was all lavish receptions and grand feasts, in gardens that were all gold and ivory, sapphires and rubies. He had ever so many tapestries on his walls. And so many cushions and couches in blues and golds, I couldn’t count them all. 

We were given vast apartments for our stay. Even the slaves slept on feather mattresses and silk those nights. The lodgings were far richer and more opulent than anything I’d ever seen in Astapor, even in the grandest of the masters’ houses.

Kraznys, drunk and charmed on Xaro’s hospitality, seemed to forget the reason he came to Qarth in the first place, and after a week or two, we left without anything but the somewhat dream-like memories of Xaro’s strange, rich palace. 

And, in my master’s case—a pounding headache that lasted for days afterwards. 

That was one of the last times Xaro Xhoan Daxos hosted _anyone_ , from anywhere. He was the king of the greatest city that ever was or ever will be, and yet he never saw anyone. He never ventured beyond his own gardens. He’d become a hermit king, wary of strangers and loud noises. 

There was a rumor that he knew the hour that he would die or the way it would happen. And they said that Quaithe of Asshai was the fortune teller who told him. It would certainly be within her power, if all the stories were to be believed.

And, according to Arthur, Ashara Dayne and Quaithe were one in the same. 

“In Slaver’s Bay, they say that Quaithe can protect sailors through Old Valyria and that she speaks in fire tongues,” I added what I knew, keeping my tone even. I didn’t want to influence Jorah and Daenerys’s decision and I knew this was difficult to stomach—the waiting, watching and doing nothing. I warned, “They say she can read minds…”

“In the Free Cities too,” Daario Naharis offered, shrugging, finally managing a knife flip that landed squarely in his palm. He seemed satisfied with this and it loosened his tongue accordingly, “She’s a powerful mage. There were some rumors years ago that there’s a feud between her and the warlocks, but honestly, Qarth is a fucking lockbox of secrets. It’s best to avoid it at all costs.”

“We can’t avoid it, you stupid man,” Daenerys gritted her teeth and turned on the sellsword immediately, spouting a mother’s fire, ten times hotter than any dragon. “Our son is in there!”

Jorah had taken her forearm smoothly, holding her back, as she’d taken a step towards the Tyroshi. Her eyes snapped with a ferocity that said she was ready and willing to strangle him, should he have anything further to say. 

Daario Naharis raised his hands against her wrath, demurring without a second thought. His reasons for being here were fairly shallow—he craved adventure and violence in all forms and wherever found. 

Or so he said. I’m not sure that was all of it. He wasn’t being paid for this. And yet, he’d jumped at the chance to help rescue Aemon, elbowing Grey Worm good-naturedly, and saying, “On the road to topple a city. Just like old times…eh, Grey?” 

No matter his true reasons, it was obvious that he didn’t want to cause more distress to a family that currently felt it so keenly. None of us did. The terrible pain written into Daenerys’s features would sway strangers to help her. 

But the fight in her simmered under Jorah’s gentle and calming touch, as seemed their natural way.

“If dragons cannot pass the Gates of Qarth, then we go in,” Grey Worm suggested, after a moment’s silence, encouraging the most obvious answer. He looked between himself, Jorah and Daario, knowing their abilities and his own. It was a simple strategy and he’d had worse odds. 

My dearest one had no fear, but spears and swords were blunt instruments in Qarth. Steel and bronze were scattered out here, in the Garden of Bones, rusted, half-covered by sand and dust, conventional weapons having failed their owners miserably. 

I told him so, “You wouldn’t get within a mile of the House of the Undying.”

“Did Lady Dayne tell you how she expects to break Aemon from their prison?” Jorah demanded from Arthur.

“She was plagued by magic,” Arthur answered, with a rueful note. 

Jeorgianna watched the young man’s features thoughtfully, having not yet spoken up. She’d been intensely worried about her brother since he was found missing, but seemed calmer here. She trusted this young man, I realized. And somehow his presence and his words were working as a salve on her soul, much as her father’s presence appeared to work on her mother.

I could understand why. There was no deceit in Arthur Selmy and he had a steady, practical optimism that I found calming too. He nearly apologized to Ser Jorah, but promised him, “I’ve seen that woman do things that cannot be explained. And she knows more about these charlatans than anyone here. She said we must wait.”

“Let’s wait, Papa,” Jeorgianna spoke up, finally, after another moment of quiet contemplation. Her eyes were dry now. She’d left her tears in Meereen and nodded steadily on the decision. She allowed, “For a little while longer, at least. They must have demands. We need to know what this is about. And if they were going to kill Aemon, they would have done it already…”

Daenerys stiffened on those words, even though they were true. Without thinking, I reached out to take her free hand, lending what support I could. She took it, gladly. 

Jorah listened to Jeorgianna but he wasn’t happy. His expression was dark and stormy. As was Daenerys’s, as she told her daughter, “If they don’t send someone out in the next quarter hour, you will give the command and have Dark Sister and Bearfyre burn those gates to the ground.”

“I will, Mama,” Jeorgianna promised, needing little encouragement. She wanted Aemon back as much as her mother and father. But something was telling her to trust Arthur Selmy.

And so we waited. With the dragons screeching out threats and snorting out fire, pacing on razored claws before stretching their wings out with thinly-veiled menace, demanding the return of one they loved best of all. 

There was no hiding from dragons. The Qarthians would have to answer our summons soon, or risk joining Astapor as a city that had once again tasted dragon fire, reminding us all of old stories of charred cities and blackened stone.

But we didn’t have to wait much longer at all.

Within minutes, the stone gates opened, scraping, rumbling, their giant hinges spitting dust, and the King of Qarth walked out into his Garden of Bones. 

With Aemon Mormont walking right beside him.


	30. A Door in the Woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the mid-week post never happened. Haha you might have noticed. But hey, back to the normal Sunday schedule, so it all worked out in the end. And oh my god, you guys. How did we get to Chapter 30?? :) 
> 
> I'm forever in awe of salzrand like WHOA, but she somehow captured some _extra_ magic in her illustration this week and I'm just...*HEART EYES* Also I want that door for my own <3 <3 <3

**_Ser Barristan_ **

Ashara used her hands to trace invisible lines against the tilted side of that ugly tower, while I stood beside her, watching her delicate movements with a measure of fascination. 

She worked methodically, fingers feeling their way along the crumbling mortar between stones, lilac eyes searching the cracks in weathered masonry, lips moving slightly, though silently, over things both seen and unseen. 

The searching and work seemed endless and she raised her wrist to her brow every once in a while, as if her head pained her, whether in frustration or from outside forces, I couldn’t tell. 

But concerned by the gesture, I asked her about it. Ashara just shook her head at my words, stubbornly sticking to the task, despite the toll it was so obviously taking on her. She was picking the lock on a riddle-box, while avoiding its trap doors and trick follies, and had little concentration to spare on anything else. Not even her own pain. 

I knew nothing of illusions or magic or warlocks and I understood little of the work her hands played at. If I tried to understand any of it, I was certain that it would send my head spinning in a way that would be useless. And I felt useless as it was, unable to help her except to stand near. 

She said _that_ was enough, but I wondered if she was speaking sincerely. 

Surely, she must remember how my mere presence failed to protect her before. Far away, long ago, in another dangerous place, when her raven-black hair sported no grey strands at all… 

The image of Ashara leaning up against a stone wall was one I’d seen before. Although at the time, I remember her wearing a half-grin and Elia was right beside her, with little Rhaenys held in her mother’s arms, grasping at the silk on her shoulder, babbling very quietly. The baby was taking cues from her mother and Ashara’s antics, trying to mimic them both by lowering her voice and turning her tiny ear to the wall. 

The two women listened intently near a door to the inner chambers, not-so-discreetly straining to hear what was happening on the other side of the stones.

“My ladies?” I remember asking as I passed in the hallway, wondering at their curious poses. They hadn’t noticed me approach, too intent at their listening, picking out the words of two raised voices drifting out from the small council chamber. 

“Shhh, Ser Barristan,” Elia bade me quickly, unashamed that I’d caught them at some casual spying. This was King’s Landing, where it was expected and even encouraged. Ashara didn’t seem to mind the discovery either, her purple eyes dancing with carefree mirth while Elia explained, in a hushed whisper, “Jon Connington is giving Tywin Lannister a piece of his mind.” 

_Ah, I see_ , I thought, knowing why the idea likely brought pleasure to Elia.

Whatever thorny words were being spoken on the other side of that wall must not have been in Tywin’s favor, as Elia had a twinkle in her dark eyes at the revelation. She was satisfied with what she heard, and eager for it to continue in a similar vein.

Which meant Jon Connington was winning the argument, whatever it was. 

There was no love lost between the Dornish princess and the Lord of Casterly Rock. Tywin despised Elia, though it was little fault of her own. Any woman who wed Rhaegar would have been on the receiving end of his churlish glowers, no matter her name, no matter her House. Tywin had served Aerys faithfully for twenty years. Until the official announcement that Prince Rhaegar would wed Elia Martell, the assumed choice was his daughter, Cersei Lannister.

Not a soul in the capital would have bet against it. 

But Aerys chose Elia for his son, astonishing us all. Tywin had not taken the insult well, nor did he see fit to hide his disappointment. Instead of fading away, his indignation seemed to grow wildly, year after year, never pruned, never cut back. And only increasing when little Rhaenys was born, her birth solidifying Elia’s position at court for good. 

I have no idea if Aerys understood the tension he’d created in his own household. He was little seen those days, keeping counsel only with his pyromancer. But Tywin’s wounded pride had exposed _wide_ cracks in the relationship between Aerys and his Hand, exacerbated by Rhaegar’s own distaste for the haughty man who led the house of lions.

And Rhaegar’s distaste was matched in those that loved him—his wife and his friends. Jon Connington, perhaps, most of all, as he was impetuous in his youth, brazen and fiery as the dragons.

“Jon is _so_ bold,” Ashara had murmured, with both hands and her ear pressed flat against that wall. She added to Elia’s revelation, in what I could only assume was plain admiration of the man she spoke of. And later, when she danced with him at Harrenhal, I thought perhaps her fancy for him went beyond admiration.

 _Men are always blind to what’s in front of them_ , she shook her head at me when I told her this, far more recently, as we talked of things that happened years ago. _Jon Connington was bold. I was stating a fact. And I danced with him, because he asked me. And if you’d asked me first, I wouldn’t have danced with any of the others…_

“You’re thinking of King’s Landing,” Ashara suddenly stated, here, now—outside the House of the Undying. 

She looked up from the tower walls, her eyes clearer than they’d been even a few minutes ago.

“I—yes,” I stumbled, wondering how she knew, still unused to all of this. 

I worried that my focus had wandered too far? Perhaps my memories were working against us in this strange place?

“No…,” she seemed to read the conflict in my mind, and all those questions so clearly. But there was no mind-reading involved in that, at least, as my confusion must have been written starkly into my features. 

She amended, “No, I mean, I want you to continue, if you can? When you think of me—of _us_ —from years ago, it’s…I think it’s working a tonic against whatever the warlocks have spiced this air with and I’m not sure why, but—there’s power in memory and…just think on me from years ago. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” I promised. It was an easy thing she asked of me and my mind would wander to the past anyway. That was its natural state these days. 

Although, there was less wistfulness in all of it—some pains and regrets would never wash out, that was certain—but at least my memories of _her_ had taken on a sweeter flavor than I’d ever known. 

Gone was the black shadow that used to linger over them, fluttering like that torn banner flying over Starfall. For I’d found her. My lost star. Ashara, with her dancing lilac eyes. 

I watched those eyes danced again now, if only briefly.

“And I loved Jon Connington about as much as he loved women in general,” she mentioned, betraying that she’d seen at least a glimpse of what thoughts lingered in my head. She tipped her head at me, saying, almost cheekily, “Which wasn’t much, if you’d like to know the truth.”

“No?” I replied, although not completely surprised. There were always rumors.

“No,” she confirmed, as her fingers found their prior hold, running along the seam in the stones. She muttered, “He loved Rhaegar from the moment he saw him.”

“Rhaegar didn’t deserve half the love he was given,” I answered, rather uncharitably. I think those were the first words I’d ever uttered against the prince I’d served so faithfully. But forty years is a long time to ponder on mistakes—his, my own. 

“He didn’t deserve _any_ of it,” Ashara agreed, with a note of hot anger in her otherwise calm voice, that I assumed she held onto for Elia’s sake. And her own.

Ashara told me that Rhaegar tried to kiss her at Harrenhal, roughly, on the stairs, drunk and mistaking her dark hair for someone else…

And the next day the crowd went grave and silent as Rhaegar’s horse took those extra steps to Lyanna Stark, laying those blue roses in the wolf-girl’s lap.

My failure on the field that day will haunt me forever, but my mind danced around it, skipping back just a little further. Ashara’s hand clasped in mine, _Jenny’s Song_ plucked out on strings that hummed on sweet midnight. And Ashara’s unguarded smile as she turned back before disappearing up the stairs. Just that once.

“They don’t have to be all sad memories, you know,” Ashara teased me, lightly, receiving impressions, if not the whole images passing through my head. 

“I don’t consider dancing with you to be a sad memory, Ashara,” I teased her back and was granted a wise little grin in return. The first since we’d entered this place.

Either the tonic of memories was growing stronger or the warlocks own magic was growing fainter. 

It was a combination of both, as we’d discover soon enough. Pyat Pree had left his tower in a rush, to go meet the dragons that now lingered at the city gates, stopped by Arthur. The warlocks would attempt to trick them inside, clumsily. In the meantime, they left their captive locked in the House of the Undying.

Also clumsily… 

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked, rather amazed at what I suddenly saw appear in the tower’s side. _Bloom_ , more like. All those invisible lines were taking shape and form, rapidly growing and twisting over an arch in the stonework that wasn’t there before. 

With just her hands, Ashara had somehow called forth a door of tangled vines and branches, purple starflowers and white roses. With the nighttime scene of a bear, dragon and stars carved upon it. 

Was it real? I took a step forward and brushed my hand against its wooded moldings, braided with ivy, smelling cedar, spruce and pine, blackberries and all those wild roses. It seemed real enough.

“Here and there,” she answered, understatedly. “I don’t like spinning illusions but there’s little else in this damned place to work with.”

“This door will lead him out?” I guessed.

She nodded, but seemed a little nervous, glancing around the ruins, “He needs to hurry. Pyat Pree has left his tower unattended, but there’s someone else here…”

“Who?” 

Ashara seemed hesitant to speak the name, giving another short shake of her head instead. 

And we were interrupted soon after, by the sound of that wooden door knob turning, twisting on its tangled roots and vines. Ashara and I exchanged a hopeful glance and I grabbed the edge of the door frame as soon as it was exposed, as the door was a growing thing, snagged by its own undergrowth. I pulled and the young boy behind it pushed until there was a large enough space for him to crawl through.

“Thanks,” the boy who squeezed out of the door said immediately, even before asking who we were. 

He shook some twigs out of his red-blonde hair and brushed dirt and foliage off both knees. He looked like he’d been crawling through the roots of a gnarled tree or the briars of a forest thicket. And perhaps that’s exactly what he’d done? 

Behind the door, I caught glimpses of patchwork sunshine from somewhere above leafy branches, black dirt and green ferns, songbirds and the sounds of twigs snapping distantly, beneath furry paws. It looked like the deep woods of a northern country—which made little sense, considering we were in Qarth and that door led straight into the heart of a stone tower.

But little made sense here.

Ashara and I had no question on the identity of the boy, as she’d seen the dragons coming to Qarth and this young man took after his father in a striking manner. Give him a few years and I might have traveled decades back in time, looking at young Jorah Mormont just before he charged through the breach at the Siege of Pyke. 

The boy didn’t know us at all, of course, but he seemed grateful for the assistance opening that door. And he regarded both of us with measured optimism, saying, “Well, neither one of you has blue lips, so that’s a good sign…”

We had no time for introductions. 

There was a sudden hissing, followed by a strange sort of howl. Of frustration? Of anger? Fiery and fierce and coming from somewhere close by. Or perhaps very far away. The echoes in this grove entertained as many tricks as the warlocks themselves. 

The hiss had syllables to it and the fiery howl had sparking fury in low tones, which sounded like an Eastern language, but certainly not one I could understand.

Or even place its true origin.

But both Ashara and the young Mormont boy seemed to recognize it, or its meaning, if not its form, and acted fast. “Go!” 

Before I knew it, all three of us were rushing away from the stone tower, out of its enclosed walls and taking cover behind the ruins that wrapped around the center tower, hunkering down and covering our ears against the growing noise.

And it was a good thing too. 

For within a minute, no more, that howl had turned into a vicious _scream_ , and there was a great shuddering, with pressure building. Until a shadow _burst_ forth from deep beneath the tower, blasting straight up and out of its top, as if an explosion of wildfire had been set off inside. The force of the blow crumbled the old stone in on itself, collapsing the walls, rattling the ruins, and sending tremors through the ground beneath our feet, down into Black Bark Grove and the city of Qarth beyond. 

As the shadow flew off to the East, the House of the Undying collapsed into nothing but rock and rubble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can confirm that the shadow is not Voldemort ;)


	31. The Gates of Qarth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

**_Jeorgianna_ **

I don’t have many childhood memories that don’t include my little brother. If I think back, I can remember two before he was born…maybe? 

They’re both a little dream-like and seem doused in sunshine and sea breezes in my head, as I suspect most early recollections are, but I remember sitting in Mama’s lap as she made me a daisy crown and I remember Papa lifting me up in his strong arms, high above his head, so far up that I thought I might graze the blue skies above. He grinned up at me as I squealed in delight, loving the sensation of flying, even at no more than two years old.

But, as for the rest, Aemon is a fixture in my memories. Especially when we were still little and playing around the gardens and beach at home, chasing fireflies and splashing in the surf, or running up and down the decks of those ships to Westeros and back again, much to Mama’s frustration, I’m sure. The salty air kissed our rosy cheeks and the rugged sailors chuckled as we passed them by, off to feed white and grey-speckled gulls who called out for bread crumbs, endlessly. 

And in those dark, cold weeks at Castle Black, when we hardly knew what was happening, except that we’d gained a grandfather who seemed to love us at once and was liable to pick us up into his arms as often as our father, and a great-uncle who tolerated our presence with odd little musings that lilted out in a quavering voice, even when he didn’t know we were there.

“Egg, I’ve seen the blue waters and white shores of Tarth and you’ll never guess. Not a sapphire to be found. Not one!” Maester Aemon had mumbled, half-asleep, as we sat at the foot of his bed. 

Aemon was on my left side and Shireen Baratheon was on my right, forming a little circle on the quilts and gathered around one of Shireen’s books. 

Mama had told us not to bother our uncle but she wasn’t there to tell us to get off the bed. She was with Papa and Grandfather, somewhere in those winter-chilled halls, speaking in hushed tones about terrible things. Gilly was watching us, bouncing little Sam on her hip and casting a few anxious glances out the maester’s window to the snowy courtyard below, shivering a little at the frost cluttering up the window panes. Every once in a while, she would wander to the hearth and reach down, one-handed, to throw another log on the fire. 

Gilly told Mama that Maester Aemon seemed happier when we were nearby, even if he never opened his clouded eyes to see us properly, and we took care not to crawl all over him. Or mostly… 

“Stop that,” I warned Aemon, when I looked up from Shireen’s book to catch my little brother crawling towards the headboard, lifting the maester’s ancient hand from the covers with a curious glint in his eyes, seemingly intent on investigating all the lines and wrinkles written into the hand of the old man he was named for. 

“What?” Aemon answered, knowing exactly _what_. He gave a little sigh before I had a chance to say anything further, and dropped the man’s hand down again, scooching back to the foot of the bed. He crossed his legs and propped his elbow up on his bent knee, resting his chin in his hand, while he said, “He’s talking about eggs again anyway…”

“And Tarth…,” Shireen mused, her blue-green eyes cast down to the book before us, her fingers turning a few more pages. She knew her books by heart and found what she was looking for quickly. When she reached the picture she sought, she pointed to a sun-drenched island in the middle of a sea as blue as I’d ever seen. The colored dye on the page was still brilliant, even though the book was old and held together loosely by worn bindings.

“Where’s this?” Aemon wondered, liking the scene immediately. His head came up from his hand and he leaned forward, examining the details. The sea and the sky reminded him of home. I found myself leaning forward too, all three of our little heads nearly touching, while crowded over the pages of Shireen’s book.

“The Sapphire Isle,” Shireen replied, running her finger along the length of the snow-white shore line. “Home of the Evenstar.” 

“What’s the Evenstar?” Gilly asked, without turning from the window. Her attention was still on the courtyard, peering at whatever activity was happening below—a girl with dark, curly hair and a boy in a sled, both with snow clinging to their furs and wind-burned faces, had just entered the castle grounds from the tunnel below—but she was half-listening to us too, and curious. 

“Lord Selwyn Tarth,” Shireen answered, with a little grin. The fire snapped on an ember in the hearth. She explained, “At least for now. It’s the title given to the acting head of House Tarth.”

“But why? And what’s it mean?” Aemon said, never satisfied with just one question.

“No one knows exactly,” Shireen shrugged. “But they say it dates back to the dawn of days, whenever that was.” 

“The dawn of days…,” Aemon repeated the mystical words. He traced his own, slightly smaller finger along the same path as Shireen’s, but stopped by a wide-mouthed cave on the right side, that seemed built deep into the rocky shore. He tapped the page twice, confident in his next words, “I bet all the sapphires are in there…”

“There aren’t any sapphires on Tarth,” I argued, reading it plain as anything on the page itself. But Aemon wasn’t old enough to know one letter from another. Except “A.” Mama had tried to teach him his name on the way to White Harbor, and so far he’d retained that first letter. 

I told him the book said that the island got its name from the blue of its waters, rather than any precious stones. 

“How do you know, Jeorgianna? Have you been there?” my brother pointed out, kind of smugly, knowing the answer to that question well enough. He lingered on that page. “Maybe they’re just hiding in plain sight…”

_Plain sight…_

Years later, I watched my little brother walk out of the Gates of Qarth—unfettered, unchained and seemingly unhurt. My heart jumped with sudden relief.

“Aemon!” I cried out without thinking, too happy to see him. I would have darted forward too, running to his side to greet him and hug him and smack him for getting caught by those warlocks in the first place, had Arthur Selmy not reached out and caught me by my wrist, pulling me back with a strong grip that brought me up short.

“No, Jeorgianna!” he cautioned in a firm voice, holding fast, before anyone else could react. 

And I didn’t have time to struggle or shake him off, even if I’d wanted to—even if I wasn’t suddenly mixed up by the strange sensation of that man’s touch, so unexpected and so…assuming. 

In Meereen, I’d daydreamed about Arthur Selmy taking my hand but this was different. This was _real_. My wrist tingled beneath his fingers.

And I could have been indignant, I suppose. How dare he hold me back from my own brother? The softer feelings that I may or may not harbor towards him didn’t mean he could just…

The confused frown that leapt to my features was soon melting away, as I saw what Arthur saw. There was a shimmer around Aemon, faint but strange, as if I was seeing his reflection in a pool of standing water. 

The shimmer became more pronounced as a minor tremor rippled through the ground at our feet, causing the dragons to stir and stretch their wings out, tempted to take to the air. At the tremor, Aemon glanced backwards towards the city—rather sharply, I thought.

But he turned back soon enough and the shimmer grew less prominent as he walked closer, slowly and with an entirely unfamiliar gait. I found myself uneasy, regarding my brother with misgiving. 

He wasn’t smiling. He was scowling at us, and it drew on his features in a way that I’d never seen before. I didn’t like it at all.

Aemon grinned more often than not, or his inquisitive gaze would wander, taking in his surroundings, combing the landscape for details. But he was doing neither as he approached us. The man beside him wore flowing robes, with a bronze-and-gold amulet affixed around his neck. He stared straight at the dragons with a hungry expression, his lips drawn in a straight line.

Arthur didn’t release my wrist, not until after he’d felt me relax and knew I would stay. Even then, I felt his fingers slip away with some reluctance. I would have wondered at it, maybe even asked about it, turning my attention on him…had my brother and his companion, whoever this broad-chested, well-dressed man was, not stopped a few yards away from the rest of us.

My mother was shaking her head, her teary eyes no dryer than before, even before Aemon started speaking.

Or whoever this pretender was. 

For the voice may have been my brother’s, but the words were not him at all.

“Mother and Father, humble greetings,” he bowed formerly to our parents and he spared not a single glance on me. Whoever thought they’d be able to trick us with this ruse should have paid more attention to who they held captive, instead of attempting to mimic some bland formula of what they thought a young boy acted like. 

The warlocks of Qarth apparently spent little time around children.

“Welcome to Qarth,” this person who looked like my brother continued. “The King of Qarth, His Eminence, Xaro Xhoan Daxos—” he waved a hand at the man beside him, who bowed graciously, if somewhat facetiously, in our direction, “—has been a gracious host to me. And I know that you have been worried for my safety. But please, lay your worries aside. Come into the city, eat, drink and see for yourself. There is nothing to fear. We are in no danger.”

“What is this?” My father’s hand had gone to the hilt of his sword. His throat bobbed on a hard swallow as he looked at Aemon, his expression pained, as he didn’t much like seeing someone else wearing my brother’s face. He demanded, “And _who_ is this?”

He turned to the other man, the King of Qarth, demanding answers. But Xaro Xhoan Daxos was either a mute or just as false as my brother. His gaze had wandered back to the dragons, but he dipped at the waist on another courtly bow, in a manner I found unnerving. Especially when he rose up from that bow, pressing his index finger to his lips, as if to stifle a sort of giggle.

They were toying with us. But I didn’t understand the game. 

“Where is Aemon?” Mama added, her voice strained and desperate. She clung to my father, in habit, and I saw Missandei take a step nearer and place a hand on my mother’s shoulder, to lend her more support. 

“Mother, don’t you recognize me?” the false boy asked. 

“You’ve never called her ‘Mother’ in your entire life,” I spoke up, thoroughly unimpressed. My own features were darkening now, as I didn’t like this game at all. Lies and illusions made me angry. I refused to abide them. “And why haven’t you looked at me?”

“Because you’re of little importance, Jeorgianna,” Not-Aemon finally allowed his gaze to drift towards me, under a dismissive look that stung just a little. But he turned back to Mama and Papa within a few moments, and then beyond them to the dragons, the sight of which appeared to please him _very_ much. But the dragons regarded this charade with as much suspicion as me, likely sensing my own reservations.

And anger.

Dark Sister would burn these strangers with little hesitation. Bearfyre was more conflicted, and took a step closer, sniffing the air, tipping his scaly head on the familiar face. But he sensed something was off too.

I blinked on the cruel words, only because they were said in a voice that I loved so very much and trusted and _missed_. 

_Where are you, Aemon?_ I thought, anxiously.

Arthur’s grip returned to my wrist, a little looser this time, but with a steady hold. I think he knew, even then, that I wasn’t prone to rash acts. But I won’t say that I didn’t consider rushing forward and scratching my brother’s face from that false thing. 

Whatever it was. _Whoever_ it was.

“You’re not my son,” Papa declared it plainly, without doubt. 

This was all Grey Worm and Daario Naharis needed to hear, as Grey Worm’s spear came down, with the metallic clang and fierce precision of the Unsullied. And Daario Naharis kissed his knife’s hilt, ready to let it fly at my father’s command.

The mute King of Qarth pulled out his own knife, from a leather sheath on his thick waistband. He showed the curved blade to all of us, one by one, and then lifted it over his head, cutting into his palm, before showing us the shallow wound.

“Does a king not bleed?” Not-Aemon wondered, in riddle-verse that sounded sing-song and hazy. He continued, “Do the dragons not wish to join us in the House of the Undying?”

“No, they _don’t_ wish it,” I grumbled.

“Then they are not very wise,” my fake brother told me, schooling me in the matter. “The House of the Undying welcomes dragons…and will tolerate bears, if they show proper manners. Otherwise, I’m afraid they will require a cage.”

“I thought you said we were welcomed by the city of Qarth? Now you say you speak for the House of the Undying?” Daario Naharis mentioned, his eyebrows sliding up a notch. “Which is it?” 

“The House of the Undying and Qarth are one in the same, sellsword,” Not-Aemon smirked, in a thin and very un-Aemon-like way. “The King is a puppet where the puppets are kings…” 

At the riddle or whatever nonsense was being spouted, Xaro Xhoan Daxos—if that’s truly who he was—began chuckling outright, his belly shaking with great laughter. Still, he said nothing at all. And his laughter got under my skin and started to prickle at the underside, enough that I just couldn’t stand it.

I wanted Papa to slice his throat open and stop that laughter. I wanted Dark Sister to burn him where he stood…

Or just give us Aemon back. I didn’t care what nonsense they were spinning, just so long as they gave my brother back to us.

The false Xaro laughed so hard he shuddered, and when he shuddered, the glamour that he wore cracked and slipped off, in jade green pieces that matched the colors of his robe and the stone at the center of that amulet, revealing a tall, but much thinner man with a bald head, blue lips and a slim, crooked sneer. 

When I looked back at Not-Aemon, he’d likewise removed the false trimmings, but it was the same person. Tall, thin, blue lips and the same ugly expression. They were twins, or the same warlock, multiplied twice.

What was this _ridiculous_ magic? And why all these games anyway?

“What do you want?” my father’s exasperation was at its last tether. My mother had reached her boiling point. But we still didn’t know where Aemon was and we couldn’t end this until we knew he was all right. 

“Just the dragons,” the man assured us, in twin voices, both looking between us, playing coy. They tilted their heads in a synchronized motion. “Give us the dragons and we’ll give your son. It’s a simple trade. And the dragons don’t belong here. They don’t belong to _you_.”

He looked right at me this time, as if scolding me.

“No, they don’t,” I agreed with him, softly, bringing a brief smile to his lips…which died away quickly as I clarified my words, “Because a dragon is not a slave.”

He stared at me and I stared back, steadily, without blinking, focusing on the feel of Arthur’s fingers around my wrist to make sure I didn’t waver. The warlock looked away first. He would have said more, taunted more, goaded more…

But there was a sudden shout from the top of the city walls.

Aemon, my brother, appeared on top of the battlements, locks of his red-blonde hair catching the sun’s rays and his relieved smile beaming out across the Garden of Bones, “Jeorgianna, Mama, Papa! Over here! I’m fine! I’m safe!”

“Is it really you?” I called back, bracing for more tricks.

“What kind of stupid question is that?” my brother curved both of his hands around his mouth to make sure I heard him. “Who else?” 

That’s all the confirmation we needed. 

They always say I’m like Papa, and I hope that’s true. Level-headed, patient and cautious, slow to anger, slow to rage. 

But once upon time, my father charged across the bridge at Pyke. And I’m my mother’s daughter too.

With Aemon out of danger, Mama, Papa and I turned on those warlocks and gave the familiar command almost simultaneously, “ _Dracarys!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The family that _Dracaryses_ together, stays together. That's how the old saying goes, right? ;)


	32. Reunions and Sweet Partings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left in this fic, folks <3 
> 
> And p.s. thank goodness I'm doing a third book, because I think I'd be an emotional wreck if we'd reached the end of this series lol. Not at all sure how I'll deal with the end of Book 3. Just warning you all early in case you will be able to hear my sobs through the interwebs ;)
> 
> Anyway, the dangers are gone so only fluff remains! Including some soft Ashara/Daenerys art courtesy of salzrand <333333\. Enjoy, friends Xo

**_Daenerys_ **

When it was finished, I rushed into Qarth, with the others not far behind. We met Aemon at the city gates, and he was in my arms as soon as his feet hit the cobblestones below the battlements. 

I didn’t spare a glance at the two people who were with him, friends though they might be, barely noting their presence—an older man who smiled warmly when he saw me and a woman with raven-black hair, greying just a little, and intelligent eyes that pondered over much, as they watched me find my son and pull him to me.

This was the second time in under a year that I’d found myself clinging to Aemon, my cheeks tear-stained and blotchy, telling him that I’d never let him out of my sight again, pulling back to run my hands over his young face, searching blue eyes so like his father’s, making sure he was in one piece and checking to see if those damned warlocks, now smoldering and smoking as charred bones in red sand, _dared_ lay a hand on my son.

“I’m fine, Mama,” Aemon promised and he meant it too, while accepting my fussing, fretting touch gladly. He wasn’t crying, my brave little bear, but I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes when he saw me, guessing how many tears had crossed my cheeks since I lost him in the marketplace in Meereen. He never liked to make his mother cry. Not then, not ever. 

His stomach growled on the heels of his words, as if protesting, and he added a little shrug afterwards, amending, “A little hungry, but fine.”

“Oh, Aemon,” I laughed through my tears at his manner, untouched by whatever those warlocks were trying to do with him. I ran my fingers over his red-blonde curls, both hands framing his young face, giving him another critical once over. Finally satisfied that he was truly fine, I pulled him down to me again, my arms thrown around his shoulders, growing broader with each passing year. 

Each half-year more like. Soon, I’d have to stand on tiptoes to manage it.

But Aemon would always reach down to give me hugs, no matter how tall he grew, no matter how much white replaced the silver-blonde strands on my own head. 

My relief in that moment went fathoms deep, as the appearance of that false Aemon outside the gates had made my blood run cold and my lungs start to freeze up. The thought that he’d…no, I couldn’t think on that.

I _wouldn’t_. Nothing had happened. My little boy was returned to me.

He was here, he was _safe_ , with my hands confirming the reality—that he was returned to us, that no harm had come to him—I felt warmth return to my veins for the first time in days. My breath no longer caught in my throat. 

I had a million questions and wanted to know how he escaped and what had happened, but words fled far from my lips as Jorah and Jeorgianna joined us. I felt their touch and heard their glad voices, and after that, there was little that I needed to know, other than the fact that my family was together again. 

And that my son was hungry. 

Ashara Dayne said she could help with that, cordially inviting us all back to her house in the city, to rest and recover, and to hear Aemon’s harrowing story from start to finish, before we headed home to the villa, where he would tell it at least a dozen more times to his grandfather and younger sister, I was sure.

A crowd had begun to gather near the city gates, as the Qarthians had heard the commotion outside their walls and felt the tremors from the collapse of the House of the Undying. Some of them had even peered past their gates and watched Pyat Pree burned to ash by dragons, while not raising a hand against it. Dark Sister and Bearfyre now flew the skies above us. But the city residents seemed little disturbed by dragons in their midst, as these people were used to stranger sights than these. 

Perhaps that might not be the case for much longer. 

Great swaths of Qarth’s splendor would vanish overnight, as it must have been illusion the whole time. And with Pyat Pree’s death, the illusions he spun unraveled quickly, their magic dissolving like sugar in hot water. Xaro Xhoan Daxos would feel this _most_ keenly, as the King of Qarth’s wealth was apparently as false as the puppet who played him in the Garden of Bones.

His famous gardens—those lush and green hanging marvels that made his palace the grandest in the region—died when Pyat Pree died, their leaves shriveled up, their flowers wilting and their high-spouting fountains gone dry. His gold-plated doors rusted in mere hours, betraying the tin beneath. The glinting crystal facets of his sapphires, amethysts and rubies dulled, as they were revealed as just ordinary pebbles from the street.

“He’ll not take this news well,” Ashara muttered as she poured out a cup of tea and passed it into my hands. She set her kettle down on the delicate, wrought iron table between us, beside a small glass vial of some grey-blue liquid that she’d brought out with the tea. 

She took a seat on her terrace, directly across from the cushioned bench I sat upon, while adding, “And likely worse when he finds out that the death I warned him of was a warlock wearing his face, and that he’s been hiding out all these years for no reason.”

“You didn’t know?” I wondered.

She shook her head, and seemed a little amused at the mistake. She said, “That’s the problem with telling fortunes. The future is always so hazy. It’s harder to spot lies until you come face to face with them. The prophecies that are built on false visions are many.”

She spoke with such old knowledge, about things I could barely understand, despite living in the shadow of three dragons for many years, and once stepping into a blazing fire and emerging unscathed after its flames burned out. 

But the things that Ashara knew, and could see, were far beyond my sight.

_Your daughter will have blue eyes, just like her father…_

When Arthur made the introductions, I’d known her almost instantly, turning to Jorah to see if he remembered her as well. Jorah’s eyes met mine and our lips twitched on the shared memory, of a long but lovely day in an eastern market, my arm looped through his as we wandered the stalls. The fortune-teller’s honeyed voice was still lingering in my ears seventeen years later.

Ashara Dayne’s voice, confirming something that my heart knew to be true. That all my children would have their father’s eyes.

I was still pleased by this simple truth, all those years later. 

And remembered it, fondly, while observing Jeorgianna’s blue eyes meet Arthur’s twice, as Aemon finished his story with the door, and all those strange sights he saw while in the clutches of the warlocks—southern jungles, damp and humid, and northern lakes, frosted and reflecting storm clouds. Ashara’s conjured door appearing in the side of a plain stone wall, and the tangled, old woods he’d crawled through on hands and knees to find its match and escape his prison.

Ashara’s eyes darkened a little when Aemon told us of the shadow that brought down the House of the Undying and Jorah asked her if she thought whoever or whatever it was might just be another warlock’s trick.

She set her expression, mulling over her suspicion while not committing to it. Not yet. She wouldn’t tell us who she thought it was and just said that the magic went beyond Pyat Pree’s talents. She allowed, “If it’s who I think it is, he won’t try again until he’s sure of victory. His pride is greater than his thirst for revenge and he won’t want to risk another defeat…”

She drifted off before saying more, as she seemed inclined not to ruin a joyous day with the musings of darker things that may or may not happen in the future. And whoever it was, he was gone for now, his halfwit mage servants still smoldering outside the city walls. That was enough for me. 

Later, Ashara asked me to sit with her on the terrace, just the two of us, while the others mingled. She seemed as interested in me as I was in her, and I found myself instantly at ease in her company—this woman who had once known my mother, father and eldest brother so well. 

There were few left alive who could say that. And I wasn’t one of them. I’d never met my father or Rhaegar. My mother died the same night I was born.

“I held your brother, Viserys, in my arms at court once,” she told me. “But I never saw you. A raven came to Starfall that said that your mother died giving birth and that Ser Willem had bundled you and Viserys up in rags, and secreted you both across the sea.”

There was old sadness shading her words, but she reached out and cupped my cheek for a moment, studying my features closely. Ser Barristan told me that her eyes were once the same color as mine, or nearly. A little paler, like lavender in the field.

“Your mother loved you so much,” she murmured, and my heart caught on the strange notion. No one had ever told me that before. At least, no one who would know it to be true. Ashara continued, “Even before you were born, she was making plans for you. She told Elia and I that she hoped you’d be a girl and that she’d always wanted a daughter. Everyone else thought Rhaegar would be the one to set things right. But I think she put all her hopes in you…”

“Viserys always told me that it was my fault she died,” I muttered the words, blunter than I meant, my tone nearly childlike, despite the fact that I was a grown woman. I was shocked to realize how much those words still stung, even though Viserys had been gone for two decades. 

And even though Jorah had gently but firmly spent those two decades reminding me that nearly everything that came out of my brother’s mouth had been a lie.

“That’s not true, Daenerys,” Ashara’s soft voice echoed my husband’s. But she was able to add certainty to the words, “Rhaella’s life was over years before either you or Viserys were born. But if there was any spark of life left within her, it was because of you. Only you. And she would have gladly given her life for yours, over and over again.”

I felt tears prick at my eyes, although I was many years from mourning over the mother I’d lost, the mother I’d never known. I hadn’t thought on her in so long. But I suppose my emotions were still raw after the events of the last few days. 

I knew my feelings on my own children, and hoped that my mother would have thought the same about me. But it was easier to believe when someone else confirmed it. Someone who knew her, someone who had once sat with her like this, and spoke of these things.

Ashara seemed to know what her words meant. Her expression was filled with warmth and soothing as she dropped her hand from my face to squeeze my hand once beneath her own. After a moment more, she pulled back to fix her steaming tea with a spoonful of sugar. 

“I think she would be very pleased to know that you chose love over a crown. And all that’s come because of it?” she added, nodding her head down towards the gardens, where Jeorgianna and Arthur were speaking quietly together, standing close beside Ashara’s hedges. I exchanged a glance with the other woman, a knowing grin stealing over both our features. 

“Jeorgianna’s too young,” I repeated Jorah’s usual complaint, but without his conviction. Besides, those words grew less true with each passing day. He knew it too. But she was my child, my first daughter and I worried just as much as he did, asking Ashara plainly, hoping for assurance, “Have you known him long?”

“No, but if he’s anything like his uncle, you needn’t worry…,” Ashara mentioned, her grin going very soft as she raised that tea cup to her smirking lips. She blew on the surface of the hot liquid before taking a sip.

“I don’t want her to grow up,” I admitted briefly, on the shadow of a sigh, but conceded. “I can’t blame her. I wasn’t much older when…”

My eyes drifted to Jorah, who was standing with Ser Barristan and Aemon, with his strong hand resting on Aemon’s shoulder, keeping him close. _Good_ , I thought. One of us needed to hold onto that boy at all times. At least until we returned home.

Seeing Jeorgianna with Arthur brought back a rush of old memories. All stolen glances and long talks, down along the beach and wandering the docks at twilight. Or even before that. When we were still with the Dothraki and I found myself looking for Jorah on the road, hoping he was soon coming to ride beside me, unaware of why it mattered so much that I have him close by. Those days when the mere sound of Jorah’s voice sent butterflies through my stomach… 

_Well, that still happens often enough_ , I mused, tenderly.

And speaking of butterflies, Missandei had wandered over to us, leaving Grey Worm and Daario to discussions of which was the superior weapon, a knife or a spear. It wasn’t difficult to guess which man chose which side of that argument.

My eyes crinkled on another wide smile, as I made room for her on the bench beside me. I knew my time with Missandei was drawing to a close and soaked up as much of her company as possible, in the meantime. Ashara must have known too, as she set her tea cup aside and took the blue-grey vial from where it was standing on the table.

She held it out to Missandei, who looked at her curiously as she took it and turned it in her hands, watching the liquid within shimmer, a host of questions written into her features.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You’ll need it if you intend to take your soldier home with you,” Ashara said, with confidence. 

She’d overheard an earlier conversation between us and must have retrieved that vial in response. Missandei told me that she wanted to visit Naath again, but lamented that it might not be possible. Grey Worm had been born on the Summer Isles. And it was common knowledge that Naath held a unique death sentence for any stranger to its shores, even if they’d otherwise be most welcome.

Ashara gave simple instructions, “Have him drink three drops every two days and that should be enough. A little goes a long way with this. By the time the bottle’s gone, he should be able to tolerate the touch of Naath’s butterflies as well as any born there.”

“He could come with me to Naath?” Missandei blinked, stunned by the idea, previously impossible.

“Yes,” Ashara replied, in an even tone. She picked up her tea once more, taking another small sip. “Sailors have told me that the Island recovered well from the fires. You may be surprised at how tall the trees have grown. The slavers picked those islands clean when you were still a child but it’s been left to grow and heal. And now you won’t have to worry about slavers coming back ever again.”

Missandei stared at the vial in her hands. It couldn’t be so easy, could it? I knew she was still hesitant to believe in anything good or kind or lovely. But, this time, she had no choice. With that vial pressed in her hand, given to her by a woman who made it a habit of working miracles. 

As much as I would miss her, I was so glad. I knew what this would mean to Missandei. A fresh start, a new beginning, a chance to live her life on her own terms, with blue skies and a shimmering sea to greet her. 

I knew something about that sort of life myself and hoped it brought her twice my happiness.

In her unabashed glee, Missandei impulsively jumped from her seat and embraced Ashara Dayne, nearly spilling the other woman’s tea. She then came back to the bench to embrace me too. We held on like sisters, which I swear we must have been—once upon a time, in another place, in another life.

“But make sure to come back to the Jade Sea someday,” I reminded her as we pulled back. As much as I wished her a long and happy life on her island of starfruit and butterflies, I wouldn’t be satisfied if this was the last time I saw Missandei of Naath. “I don’t think I could stand never seeing you again.” 

“Me neither,” she assured me, taking my hand and squeezing the palm tight. “We will, I promise.”

I didn’t need Ashara Dayne’s gift of foresight to see the future in this instance. Missandei’s wide, sweet smile said that it would be so.


	33. May the Sea Rise To Meet You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In classic Jade Sea fashion, salzrand and I decided to end with some good old-fashioned fluff. Home and family and stuff. Enjoy, friends Xo

**_Jorah_ **

_Home._

I would never grow tired of coming home. 

All those years ago, when Daenerys asked me what I prayed for, I wasn’t lying. A truer word had never escaped my lips, not before and not after. Except perhaps those hushed words I’d softly hum in Daenerys’s ear when the hours were late and we lay wrapped in each other’s arms, as one—

 _I love you. I’ll always love you._

I’d once thought I’d never see my home again. Bear Island, with all its evergreen forests and high waterfalls and snow-dusted meadowlands. With the cold sea crashing against a jagged, rocky shore, the bears rambling up hillsides trimmed in red and violet wildflowers and trout jumping in the clear blue of mountain streams.

I would _always_ love Bear Island and think of it fondly. The natural beauty of the place, the resting place of so many I’d loved—my mother, Aunt Maege, Dacey and the other girls. They were all a part of me, just as the place itself would always be a part of me. 

But Bear Island was no longer my home, not for many years.

I remember the first years here, sailing out on the water at dusk, when we’d bear away from the fishing grounds and turn towards home, and the barrelman in the crow’s nest would soon catch sight of the sunset-bathed harbor and call out land from his lofty perch—at his call, I’d have to hold myself back from jumping in those lapping waters and swimming the rest of the way.

 _Home._

For the sight of home always gave my heart wings and made me think I could manage the impossible. 

It wasn’t the sight of the coast itself, even though the Jade Sea had as many charms as Bear Island and was beautiful in its own right, its white-washed villas and beaches gleaming against a leafy, grassy coast and a blue-green sea. But it was the thought that I’d see my family before the end of the evening, kiss my children and fall asleep that night with Daenerys in my arms. The weariness of the day and the journey, no matter how long or how difficult—would instantly slide off me like raindrops off the backs of Daenielle’s waddling ducks and I’d feel renewed and blessed, and younger by a score of years. 

As I did now, standing up on the cliffs, Daenerys’s hand enveloped in mine, as we took our time walking down the well-trod path that would lead us down to the dragon’s secluded bay. 

The dragons were no longer a secret, of course, but the residents of our little seaside harbor seemed to take the news in stride. There were sailors who’d sworn they’d seen great-winged beasts fishing the long shores for years. The doubters would be buying drinks at the tavern in the village for some time, having to finally pay up on overdue bets.

But even with the revelation of dragons appearing once more, as if from ancient graves centuries-old, the news spreading like wildfire to the four corners of the world, our little bay remained hidden, nestled among the cliffs and safe from storms. The rumors of hauntings in that bay persisted, with or without the dragons, having preceded their hatchings by decades. 

And we still went down to that half-moon beach often, to walk on the sand or wade in the water, to fish in the shallows and fly amongst the white-puffed clouds and deep blue skies that so often domed the horizon here. If I had my choice, that would be the extent of our adventures from now until the end of time.

“Me too,” Daenerys agreed, with an irrepressible grin. She hadn’t stopped smiling since Aemon was returned to us. The relief lingered in her features, only glowing brighter when Dark Sister and Bearfyre finally touched down at the house and Daenielle came skipping out of the villa to greet us, with Father following a little more leisurely behind. 

Daenielle threw her arms around Daenerys first, sinking against the soft embrace, her cheek resting against her mother’s breast. After a shower of Daenerys’s kisses, and their ardent “I missed you so much, darling”, “I miss you too, Mama” and “how are the ducks?”, she came to me, where I lifted my youngest daughter—still small enough to manage it—high up into the air and asked her if she’d behaved for her grandfather while we were gone.

“She was a perfect angel,” Father answered for her, his craggy features gone as soft as the face of Aemon’s old stuffed bear. He leaned against the wood frame of the red door, hands in his pockets and cheer on his face, as he watched us with Daenielle. 

His cheer broke into a full grin as Aemon and Jeorgianna breezed past us, to nearly tackle him with the force of their combined hug. He took his hands from his pockets at once, gathering the children up easily, together, one under each arm, whiskered kisses generously spared between them. It was a familiar embrace for the three of them, one learned at Castle Black all those years ago, when they were still just babes. 

“Grandfather and I finished the boat,” Daenielle told me her most pressing news, proud of their accomplishments while we were gone. She assured me, “And it doesn’t sink at all.” 

“Not even a little bit?” I teased.

“No, Papa,” she said, very seriously, and I laughed as I pressed another kiss against her cheek. 

She was right, of course. The rowboat was more than seaworthy, as my Father wasn’t one to do anything by half measure. As Daenerys and I took our time meandering down the cliff-side path, Father had already cast off, with Aemon at the oars beside him. They were bobbing in deeper waters, with fishing line cast out in the weeds along a natural reef, no more than a quarter mile out. 

Daenielle was with them, but flying on Seadancer above, making sure to hold her breath each time the water-loving dragon decided to take a dive beneath the gentle waves. She came up from the deep water laughing and shook out her wet hair, one hand on her dragon’s scales, the other brushing saltwater from her eyes.

“Chase the fish towards us, Daenielle,” Aemon reminded her. His voice was raised a little, to reach her up in the thermals, and the echoes in the bay bounced off the cliffs and reached our ears too, as if we were already down there with them.

“She knows what she’s doing, Aemon,” his grandfather countered, in a lower tone, before casting his own line out again. He was steady on his feet in that boat, with sea legs that had been earned early in his life, in far shakier skiffs and shifting ice floes around Bear Island. Father was as sturdy as the boat itself, which continued to bob up and down on minor waves drawn in by the dragon’s deeper dives.

Daenielle didn’t answer her brother, too busy skimming the blue waters with Seadancer at a breakneck pace, as if they were skating on ice, quickly taking a breath again as the dragon went under. 

Bearfyre flew with them but hovered closer to Aemon, circling the skies above the rowboat, keeping a careful guard. Having lost his rider once, I don’t think the dragon was willing to lose him again. Neither were we. I’d made a vow to myself and to Daenerys. 

And here, at home, it felt like it might keep. 

Dark Sister was still perched up on the cliffs with us, stretching her wings out and waiting for Jeorgianna. Jeorgianna lingered behind her mother and I, back at the bend in the path, just out of sight of the bay, as Mathias Serik had met us on the road from the house. He said he wanted a word with her, finally doing the honorable thing by asking it outright, with no more hiding in the bushes or crouching by the garden gate. 

Daenerys bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning as she took my hand and led me away, before I could say or do anything in reply. She _dragged_ me away, more like, leaving our daughter alone with another one of her young men. 

Gods, why did there have to be so many? 

“I thought she liked Arthur Selmy?” I asked Daenerys, once we were out of earshot of the two young people, both flummoxed and on the fence about hoping it was true. There were qualities in Arthur that were absent in Mathias. And there was an added benefit that Arthur wasn’t currently here…

“She does,” Daenerys replied, as if it was all so clear to her. Lucky woman. She was firm with me, tightening her grip on my hand, “But let her handle this.”

We tarried on the cliffs and I tried not to cast too many glances behind us. But I noted that when they parted, there was no momentary clasping of hands, as she’d done with the Selmy boy before we left Lady Dayne’s house in Qarth. She merely gave a friendly wave and Mathias waved back, already turning away from her, his footsteps headed back up the road to the harbor. 

As Jeorgianna continued down the pathway to join us, I couldn’t help but admit what my eyes could no longer deny. 

My little girl was growing up. Perhaps, she was grown already. She was _so_ beautiful, just like her mother. So strong and brave and good. As she reached down to pick a wild daisy from the side of that rocky path, there was a contented look in her features more commonly seen on a woman twice her age. 

My heart broke just a little on that image, only because I could too easily bring to mind the same scene, but years earlier—when her braids were messier and her tottering steps were less sure, my baby girl reaching up for me to carry her the rest of the way, all the while keeping her daisy prize safe in her little fist.

“How is Mathias?” Daenerys asked her once she reached us, in an even tone, keeping her voice neutral.

“He’s fine,” Jeorgianna sighed a little, twirling that daisy between her fingers lazily. She added, almost absently, “He’s getting married.”

“Married?” I asked, with my eyebrows shooting up just a little. “To who?”

Jeorgianna gave a slight shrug, seemingly undisturbed by the news, “One of the village girls. Bithia’s grand-niece, Lerissa? I think we met her once.”

“She has dark brown hair?” Daenerys tried to place her.

“Mmhmm,” Jeorgianna mused, doing the same. “And her father owns the bakery by the docks, yes?”

“That’s the same one I’m thinking of,” Daenerys confirmed. Jeorgianna handed the daisy over to her mother, who took the flower with one hand. I released the other, as she required it, her thumb and forefinger coming up to touch Jeorgianna’s chin, bringing her gaze up to ask the obvious question, “Are you disappointed that it’s not you?”

“No, Mama. Not at all,” Jeorgianna shook her head, grinning at us both in a way that made clear her heart had never and _would_ never belong to a boy as fickle as Mathias Serik. She continued, her words sincere, even with the clever tip of the head which accompanied it, “Besides, I’m way too young.”

“Gods bless you, sweetheart,” I murmured on the repetition of my own words, suppressing a low, protective growl that hid just behind it. A part of me wanted to chase after Mathias and give him a piece of my mind. What kind of man chases after the affections of one girl, while obviously courting another? But the other part of me was just too pleased to let him walk away on his own.

So I merely chuckled at her cheeky grin, bringing my oldest child close, to plant a kiss against her forehead. 

We released her to the skies soon after, as Dark Sister had grown impatient on the ground. Within a few minutes, Jeorgianna had joined her sister in the air.

“Don’t think too poorly on that boy,” Daenerys told me, as we sauntered a few more steps, to the head of a steeper trail that led down to the soft sands of the crescent beach. “Most men have attention spans of gnats when it comes to a pretty face. One is usually as good as another.”

“Then it isn’t love,” I mentioned, with confidence. 

“It never was,” she agreed, slipping her hand through my arm. She asked a question then, one she’d asked a few times before. But I suspected that she’d never grow tired of hearing the answer, as I would certainly never tire of giving it. She wondered, “How long would you have waited for me?”

We paused at the very edge of those white cliffs, facing a sea breeze and the familiar glory of sunlight falling on the expanse of the Jade Sea. The children’s voices mixed with my father’s, drifting up to our ears. The sound of waves persisted, breaking on the shore and lapping against the hull of Father’s boat, harmonized with the beat of dragon wings in the air, diving and skimming seawater. 

It all seemed so eternal. As if the day would last…

“Forever, Daenerys,” I promised her, as my hand trailed around her waist and drew her near. I bent and kissed the top of her silver-blonde head, as her hand rested against my chest, adding, “And likely a few more years after that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnnnd that's a wrap on "Storms", folks <3 
> 
> Since this isn't really goodbye, I'll try to keep this shorter than usual -
> 
> First, a massive thank you, thank you, thank you to my readers!!! <3 <3 <3 This series is still sparking so much joy in my writer-girl heart and the fact that I've still got so many awesome-amazing readers sticking around for the journey is just YAY *all the bear hugs* 
> 
> As I've mentioned, this is not the end of our Jade Sea adventures. Honestly, I'm still considering making the Mormont-Targaryens immortal just so that the fluff is forever (and that's why "Jade Sea Bears" will never officially end, just so ya know lol) ;) And I plan to start writing Book 3 fairly soon. Just need to get control of Jamais T'oublier first. Because oh my goodness, I'm honestly not sure how much is left in that story - I sat down to write what I thought would be a short chapter yesterday and it's currently 3300 words, so what do I know? 
> 
> P.S. salzrand and I are also planning another secret project which we're hoping to write/draw at the same time as Book 3 (not Jade Sea verse but ALL THE FLUFF) so yeah, basically, you can expect Jorleesi from us for the foreseeable future <3 #NoRegrets #BestLobsters #ImmortalLobsters #OtherShipsCouldNever
> 
> As always, salzrand, #YOUROCK - the Jorleesi Soul Sister I never expected but wouldn't trade for all the Lannister gold in Westeros <3 My love to all. Mwah!


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